



VI 




HARVARD 

iiiiiii 

• YALE • 

IIIIIII 

PRINCETON 

Jc^ IIIIIII J<);7. 

C • COLUMBgr-1 




ILLV5TRATED 




S-^J^ ^^"^ 






1895 



I 



Copyright, 1895, by Harper k liROTiiERS. 
All rights reserved. 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

HAKVAKD 1 

BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

TALE 45 

BY AUTnnit T. HADLET 

PRINCETON 93 

BY WILLIAM M. SLOANE 

COLUMBIA 157 

BY BKAXDEJl MATTHEWS 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PACK 

CLASS DAT Pfontispifce 

HARVARD SEAL 2 

MEMORIAL HALL 6 

PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT 9 

VIEW OF COLLEGE IN 1739 11 

THE COLLEGE YARD 13 

SEVER HALL 17 

HARVARD GTMNASICM 19 

CLAVERLET HALL, CAMBRIDGE 23 

student's ROOM IN CLAVERLEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE 25 

HARVARD BOAT-IIODSE ON THE CHARLES RIVER 27 

GORE HALL 29 

MDSECM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY 31 

GROVES OP ACADEME 33 

THE WASHINGTON ELM 37 

AUSTIN HALL 39 

A STREET IN CAMBRIDGE 41 

YALE SEAL 46 

PRESIDENT TIMOTHY DWIGHT 49 

TALE COLLEGE, 1793 61 

VANDERBILT DORMITORIES 53 

THE CHAPEL, FARNAM HALL, AND DDRFEE HALL 67 

REAR OF THE CHAPEL . 61 

YALE RECITATION UALt 65 

GVMNASIOM — EXTERIOR 69 

GYMNASIUM — INTERIOR 73 

THE OLD FENCE 75 

"SKCLL AND BONES " HALL 76 

NEW LIBRARY 77 

SOUTH MIDDLE 81 

STATUE OF ABRAHAM PIERSON ... 85 



vui ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

observatory 88 

"scroll and key" hall 89 

princeton seal 94 

president francis l. patton 97 

JAMES McCOSU, D.D,, LL.D 99 

NASSAU HALL 101 

THE LIBRARY 103 

THE HALSTED OBSERVATORY 107 

MARQCAND CHAPEL AND MURRAY HALL 109 

THE president's HOnSE 113 

ENTRANCE TO THE PRESIDENT'S GROUNDS 116 

THE ART MUSEUM 119 

ALEXANDER HALL 124 

SCHOOL OF SCIENCE 127 

PRINCETON SEMINARY BUILDING. . 131 

WHIG HALL 133 

THE GYMNASIUM 137 

UNIVERSITY HALL 143 

WITHERSPOON HALL 147 

BROKAW MEMORIAL BUILDING 161 

COLUMBIA SEAL 158 

PRESIDENT SETH LOW 161 

king's COLLEGE 163 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE 166 

COPPER CROWN ON CUPOLA 166 

HAMILTON HALL 167 

A BIT OF THE OLD AND THE NEW 169 

STAIRWAY LEADING TO LIBRARY 173 

EX-PRESIDENT FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 177 

SILVER MEDAL OP KING'S COLLEGE — OBVERSE ISO 

SILVER MEDAL OF KING's COLLEGE— REVERSE 181 

INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY 185 

GENERAL PLAN OF THE GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS OP THE NEW COLUMBIA 

COLLKGE 191 

PROPOSED DESIGN FOR THE NEW LIBRARY BUILDING — VIKW OF EAST END 

TOWARDS AMSTERDAM AVENUE 195 

PROPOSKD DESIGN FOB THE NEW LIBRARY BUILDING VIEW OK THE FRONT 

FACING ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH STREET 199 

FOLDING plates; — 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Facivg page 16 

YALE UNIVERSITY " " 48 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY " " 96 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY " " 160 



HARVAllD UNIVERSITY 



C 



> '--i > N^ 




|ROM whatever side one approaches Cambridge, 
the tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall is 
conspicuous. It is an appropriate emblem of 
the university. It is the monument of gen- 
erous youth trained to the performance of duty, and 
prompt to offer life a willing sacrifice to the public good. 
jS'o other building in the United States is consecrated by 
more tender and noble personal and patriotic associations 
^associations which, connecting the life of the university 
with the life of the nation, and indicating the intimate 
relation between ideal studies and unselfish character, 
afford a perennial inspiration to high conduct. Tiie walls 
of the central hall are lined with inscriptions that cele- 
brate loft}-^ virtues, anil with tablets on which are recorded 
the names of those sons of Harvard who died for their 
country in the war for national regeneration. Through this 
hall every day a majority of the undergraduate students 
pass and repass to and from the great adjoining dining- 
hall, whose windows are filled with the images of the 
scholars and poets and heroes of past times, and whose 
walls are adorned with the portraits of the worthies of tlie 
university who have served the cause of learning or of the 
state. He must be of a dull spirit who is not moved by 
the silent and familiar presence of such incentives to ex- 



4 FOUU AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

cellence, and who at times does not feel his heart glow and 
quicken with the thought that, as a member of the uni- 
versity, he is an associate with m^n in whose characters and 
lives the worth of its teachings and influence has been ex- 
pressed, and that he is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses 
who claim of him that he show himself worthy to belong to 
their company. 

The chief and oldest seat of learning in New England, the 
local foundations of Harvard College were solidly laid, and 
its superstructure framed in accord with those fundamental 
principles of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which 
have so largely contributed to the shaping of the character 
of the United States. Its beginning was in 1636, and in 
1650 a charter was granted by the General Court, under 
the seal of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, establishing 
Harvard College as a corporation " for the advancement of 
all good literature, arts, and sciences," and this charter, with 
an appendix passed in 1657, is now in force precisely as 
first drafted, "the venerable source of collegiate authority" 
at the present day. But in the course of centuries the 
College has developed into an institution in many respects 
different from that contemplated by its founders. It is a 
novel growth of time, largely a product of ideas and con- 
ditions peculiar to America. 

Obvious as it is tiiat the successful working of a de- 
mocracy is dependent on popular education, it is no less 
plain that the quality and sufficiency of that education are 
dependent upon the superior institutions of learning. They 
are the head- waters of the stream of education by which 
the general intellectual and moral life of the community is 
in large measure supplied and sustained, and it is not too 
much to sa3'.that they consequentl}'^ possess an importance 




fTJff?. 



MEMORIAL HALL 



beyond that of any other of our institutions. But the 
influence of most of them is hampered by narrow means, 
local limitations, or sectarian restrictions. The services 
which the numerous smaller colleges perform in their re- 
spective localities are great, but it is impossible for them to 
offer to their students the advantages of a trul}^ liberal 
education. 

In order to provide such an education, the term liberal 
must apply in the fullest sense to the institution itself. It 
must be free from every bond of party or sect, and so pos- 
sessed with the spirit of freedom of thought that its teach- 
ers may enjoy entire liberty of inquiry and of instruction; 
it must afford liberty of choice of study to its pupils, and 
it must be open upon equal terms to all students of what- 
ever race or social position. It must afford such assistance 



6 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERHITIES 

to poor students of good character and capacity as may 
enable them to secure a full proportionate share of the 
opportunities it offers. And it must be so amply endowed 
as to maintain varied, disinterested, and able instruction in 
all the more important branches of knowledge. Moreover, 
its life must be recognized as an integral part of the life of 
the state, and it must have proved the worth and power of 
its discipline by the character of those whom it has nurt- 
ured, and by the services which they have rendered to the 
communit3\ 

The influence and authority which a great institution of 
learning derives from age is hardly to be overestimated. 
The mere increase in the sum of the associations that at- 
tach themselves to it strengthens the force of its appeal 
to the imagination, on which the increase of its resources 
largely depends. "Many well-devoted persons," says the 
Harvard charter of 1650, " have been and daily are moved 
and stirred up to give and bestow sundry gifts, legacies, 
lands, and revenues for the advancement of all good liter- 
ature, arts, and sciences." The stream of such bounty 
widens as it flows. With the natural growth of the com- 
munity, the number of students increases. But though 
this be true, and though the growth of Harvard has been 
more rapid of late than ever before, it is not 3'et as great 
as it ought to be in comparison with the growth in num- 
bers, in wealth, and in ]iower of the nation. The main 
reasons of this fact are to be found in the general condi- 
tions of American society during the past twenty years, 
rather than in the special conditions of the university. 
The fact, therefore, is not an" exceptional one; it is true 
of all the leading institutions of pure learning in the 
United States, true of the whole system of the higher edu- 



IlMtV.iJiO I'MVEIiSlTY 1 

cation, aiul it is ol' greater import to the nation at large 
than to the individual institutions themselves.* Among 
tiie o!)vious niinoi' causes of tiie comparatively slow growth 
of the older colleges must be reckoned the establishment 
of a great number of local institutions more or less fitted 
to supply the demand for learning in tiie regions where 
they have been founded, and thus tending to diminish the 
resort of youth to the older and better equipped, but more 
distant and exacting institutions. The foundin"' of many 
of these colleges is a natural result of the material anil 
intellectual conditions of the community, and may, perhaps, 
be generally serviceable to the cause of education. It is 
only to be regretted when, as in such a case as the recent 
establishment of Clark University at Worcester, means are 
employed for the foundation of a new institution which 
could more wisely have been used to strengthen and en- 
large the olil. For, however serviceable such a new institu- 
tion may become, the fact is not to be overlooked that its 
establishment involves a dissipation of wealth and of en- 
ergy. Whatever is generous in the object of the founders 
would lie far more effectively promoted if the means re- 
quired for the foundation and carrying on of the new in- 
stitution were concentrated and applied in an alread}' exist- 
ing school of learning. The lamentable waste involved in 
the needless duplication of the instruments of study, of 

* III I860 the percentage of college students to the total population of the 
United States appears from the returns of the Census and the reports of the 
United States Commissioner of Kducation to have been .00174; after this time 
there was a decline to as low as .00106 in ISSV. Since tlien there has been a re- 
covery, and in 1892 tlie percentage had risen to .00175. But this is a miserable 
showing. I take these 6gures from an interesting paper on " The Decline and 
Revival of Public Interest in College Education," by Mr. Merritt Starr. Chicago, 
1893. 



8 FOUR AilElilCAX VNIVERSiriES 

buildings, libraries, and laboratories, would at least be 
avoided. Eut more than this, and of more essential im- 
portance, no new school of learning in a region where an 
old and vigorous one already exists can share in those tra- 
ditions and associations of inestimable value in education — 
stimulating, elevating, and refining — which inhere in an 
institution that has long been one of the chief sources of 
the higher intellectual and moral life of the community, 
and in the sup])ort of which the affections of many suc- 
cessive generations have been engaged. These are things 
that neither money nor mere good-will can suppl}'. 

Competition among institutions of learning is of no less 
importance than in other fields of activity for the mainten- 
ance of a high standard of accomplishment, but here, no 
less than elsewhere, competition may be pushed too far, and 
to tlie injury of all tlie competing parties. In the case of 
these institutions the danger is not greater that through 
excessive competition the supply of pupils maj' be so divided 
as to be insufficient in any one among them for its healthy 
life, than that the supply of competent teachers may be 
insufficient to meet the demand for a strong body of in- 
structors. 

But while the multiplication of colleges and so-called 
universities has of late done something to check the normal 
growth of the older schools of learning, a much more es- 
sential and im])ortant cause of the comparative slowness in 
the increase of their students is to be found in the general 
tendency of our recent civilization to concentrate interest 
upon material aims, and to turn tiie most active and ener- 
getic intelligence of the community to the pursuit, not of 
knowledge and wisdom, but of wealth, and to the attain- 
ment of what are esteemed to be practical, in distinction 



u.mrAitn university 9 

I'ruin the ideiil, objects of life. Tliis tendency is no less 
obvious in the Old World than in the New. It is the most 
marked characteristic of our age. It must be reckoned with 
in all our considerations of the state of modern society, in 
our political speculations, and in our estimates of the worth 
of life in our own times. It may be de})lored by those who 




PRESIDKM' CHARLf:S W. EI.IOT 



cherish the high opportunities of human existence, but it 
must be accepted as the inevital)le and irresistible drift of 
the age, and those who hold life as meaning more than 
bread must set themselves, not to the vain work of stem- 
ming the current, but of so directing its force that in the 
long-run it may be rendered beneficial to those objects for 



10 FOUH AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

which the best men in all times have striven. It is vain 
to keep back the inundation of the Nile, but some of the 
sujierabundant waters may be so turned as to fertilize the 
sands, and to change the flood from an instrument of ruin 
to a means of welfare. Egypt, said Herodotus, is the gift 
of the Nile. 

One of the results of the rapid and brilliant development 
of the material resources of the world, and of the natural 
desire which it has stimulated in all classes to secure a share 
in the growing wealth, has been the increased eagerness of 
youth to enter at an early age upon the pursuits, profes- 
sional or other, which lead directly to the obtaining of a 
livelihood and the acquisition of money. The time spent 
in acquiring general culture and mental resources that have 
no immediate relation to getting on in the world seems as 
if wasted to those whose desires are set upon speedy ad- 
vancement in the career of fortune, and they turn from the 
college or university to the professional school or the liusi- 
ness office. This disposition has been confirmed by tlie 
cori'espondingly rapid development of science and of 
scientific methods of instruction during the past half-cen- 
tury, which has led to a higher standard of purely pro- 
fessional training, and to the consequent necessity for a 
longer period of preliminary professional study than was 
formerly requisite. The term of study in the professional 
schools now needed to equip the student for his work is 
longer by one year at least, often by two years, than was 
deemed necessary thirty years ago. A steady pressure is 
exerted for the lessening of the term of general education 
in order to secure more time for special training, and many 
a 3'ouug man, in haste to enter his profession, gives up 
altogether the undergraduate course of stud v. Undoubted- 



//. I A' 1 -.1 ItlJ UXl 1 KRSIT Y 



n 



ly, as regards not only the individual but also the general 
intellectual life of the community, this is to be regretted. 
The difficulty is augmented by the fact that the standard 
for entrance to the undergraduate department of our uni- 
versities lias during the same period been consideraljly 
raised, with the effect of increasing the average age of the 
undergraduate students by one or two years. The I'ead- 
justment of the proportions of time given to general culture 
and to special training, and the best distribution between 
them of the period allotted to education, is one of the most 
serious problems foi- those now engaged in the conduct of 
our universities. The lead in raising the standard of our 
professional schools, as well as of the undergraduate depart- 
ment, has throughout been taken by Harvard. 




/i il/^^:tr/^Me (^Za/^a^i^n/ ^amSn^^/o-Ae/i/ (^no^^^id 



View of College: in 1759 , 



12 FOUn AMERICAN VNIVEHSITIES 

But while the universities must respond, if they are to 
perform their great public function aright, to the demands 
of the community, they are also required to recognize its 
needs, and more especially those which must be supplied 
if its higher life is to be duly maintained. They must guide 
and lead, not merely follow the general direction of the 
national progress. Their proper work is not only one of 
teaching, but of inspiration as well. It is for them to 
enforce the conviction upon their students, and through 
them upon the conmiunity, that mere material prosperity 
affords no solid basis for the permanent welfare of a nation. 
The very continuance of this prosperity depends on the 
intelligence and character of the people, and thus the insti- 
tutions that are devoted to the cultivation of the intelli- 
gence and of the moral faculties are, even from a material 
and selfish point of view, the most important institutions of 
the country, and those which have the highest claim on the 
support of all who are engaged in the acquisition of wealth, 
no less than of those who cherish high ideals of national char- 
acter, who believe in the supremacy of s]>iritual achieve- 
ment, and who know that " wisdom exalteth them to honor 
that hold her fast." 

But although the resort of youth to the higher institu- 
tions of learning is b\' no means what it ought to be, com- 
pared with the growth in wealth and the increase in popu- 
lation of the country, nor what is needed for the protection 
of its material interests, and for the improvement of its 
civilization, yet the number of young men who yearly fre- 
quent them is not inconsiderable. In the present year, 189-lr, 
there are 3160* enrolled at Harvard, of whom 1(156 are in 

* This number does not include tlie 346 students enrolled iu the Summer 
Courses, most of whom are not candidates for a degree. 



llARV.iRD UXIVERtiirr 15 

the undergradiuitt! ilepartment. They come from forty 
States and Territories of the Union, and a few from foreign 
countries. They represent every grade of society, every 
variety of creed — Orthodox, Liberal, Eoman Catholic, Ag- 
nostic, Jew; every shade of political opinion; and they 
meet and mingle on terms of even more complete equality 
than those which commonly exist in society. There is no 
community in which artificial distinctions have less influ- 
ence, and probably there is no one of the larger colleges of 
the land in which simple collegiate divisions, such as those 
of the annual classes and of college societies, have less ef- 
fect in creating distinctions in the ranks of the students. 
Student life at Harvard Is essentially and healthily demo- 
cratic. In all departments, alike of study or of sport, there 
are no marked distinctions except the natural ones of char- 
acter and capacit\'. The rich student undoubtedly has 
some advantages over the poor, but they are for the most 
part either strictly personal, as in the ability to spend more 
for amusement and in the gratification of special tastes, or 
they enable him to belong to the more expensive and ex- 
clusive, but otherwise in general less desirable clubs. If he 
be an attractive fellow in bearing anil manners, they assist 
him in gaining a more or less factitious popularity. But 
the disadvantages of narrow means are less obvious and less 
felt at Harvard than in society at large, and a youth of 
independent and reasonable character need never suffer 
from any hurt to his feelings because of his poverty. Of 
coarse, in college, as in the world, there are heart-burnings 
produced by the differences in wealth and social position, 
but, on the whole, the relations of the students with each 
other are simple, manly, and determined by character and 
manners rather than by any other considerations. 



16 FOVli AilEHICAN UNIVERSITIES 

The evil influence of wealth is more felt here, as in other 
universities, in another way. Many parents who have ac- 
quired riches rapidly, and are desirous of obtaining social 
position and consideration for their sons, send them to 
college for this end quite as much as with an aim to a 
solid education, and supply them witli incomes far beyond 
their legitimate needs. These youths form a small and 
unfortunate section of the college community, exposed to 
extraordinary temptation, and often unfitted by domestic 
training to resist it. They naturally fall into extravagant 
expenditure that leads to self-indulgence, waste of time, 
neglect of opportunity, and in some cases to immoral hab- 
its. They set a bad example which is not without effect. 
They raise the standard of expense even for those who are 
supplied with but a moderate and appropriate income. In 
the courses of study which they nominally pursue they are 
a hinderance to the progress of the industrious members 
of the class. They contribute little or notliing to the wel- 
fare of the college. But, on the other hand, they them- 
selves not infrequently derive distinct benefit from their 
college experience. They could probably find nowhere else 
so little false regard for wealth ; they are for the time 
members of a community in which other distinctions have 
a legitimate superiority ; they are made aware of the ex- 
istence of higher ideals than those which riches constitute 
or enable their owner to attain ; they are subjected to a 
discipline which the outer world of society does not affoi-d ; 
the existence and tlie power of things of the intelligence 
are forced upon their attention, and it not infrequently 
happens that some intellectual interest is awakened in 
their minds, and they leave college with some mental 
resources and some respect for the nobler use and ends of 



Sever Hall. 



Library. 










Boylston Hall. 



President's House. 



Perkins Hall. Conant Hnll. 
SclMillflc iictiui*). Hiilwortliy Hnll. 

StoUKhtori Hnll, .IrfTiTHoii Liihoraliiry. 




Pre»l{kuL-|i Uouso. 




SETER HALL 



life, which, without a college course, they might never have 
gained. 

One fact of much importance which has been very no- 
ticeable in recent years is the marked improvement in the 
general spirit and temper of the undergraduate body. This 
seems mainly due to three causes — the raising of the aver- 
age age of the students ; the establishment of the elective 
system, which requires each of them to select and deter- 
mine his course of study ; and, above all, to the policy 
introduced and now firmly established at Harvard of treat- 
ing the students as capable of self-government and respon- 
sible for their own conduct. Nowhere else is the student 
more independent and more trusted than at Harvard. He 

2 



18 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

is treated not as a child but as a man, and the good results 
which have followed from this policy are obvious in the 
improved order, the increased industry, and the readier 
submission to authority that prevail throughout the uni- 
versity. Among fifteen hundred youths, most of them 
just released from the strict discipline of school, or the im- 
mediate control of l^eir parents, there will, of course, be 
some incapable of meeting the responsibility of indepen- 
dence, and of making good use of its op])ortunities. There 
are some men who never outgi'ow a childish habit of mind. 
But, as a whole, with few exceptions, the students show 
themselves worthy of the confidence reposed in them. 
Even those who enter college children in disposition soon 
learn the folly of prolonged childishness, and acquii'e a 
manlier temper. The test to which the students are sub- 
jected by becoming at once masters of their own lives is 
a severe one. Some fail under it ; but its effect in develop- 
ing moral character, through the sense of personal respon- 
sibility, is unquestionably beneficial to a great majority. 
Harvard College is not the place for a youth of weak will, 
or of convictions in regard to right and wrong that rest on 
artificial supports. Parents who wish their sons to be con- 
strained to virtue by external observances and formal jien- 
alties should not send them hither. It is indeed true that 
the domestic training and the scliool education of the act- 
ual generation of American children are often lamenta- 
bly wanting in respect to the simplest elements of sound 
character, and many parents look to the college to make 
o-ood defects due to their own inefficiency or neglect. 
But this is a charge which the college cannot undertake 
by direct means. It must assume that the youth of eighteen 
or nineteen years old who enters its gates no longer needs 



irAIiVMll) IMVKRSITY 21 

to be treated as an infant. Usually this assumption is 
correct. It would be difficult to iind a l)ettcr-bcliaved and 
better-mannered body of lifteen hundred young men than 
the students at Cambridge. Offences against good order 
in college are r<are ; against good civic order still rarer. 
The high spirits incident to 3'outh occasionally manifest 
themselves in exuberant display and in reckless conduct, 
but lively animal spirits are not characteristic of the Amer- 
ican temperament, and there is too little rather than too 
much of genuine gayety and jollity in college life. Har- 
vard students have outgrown some of the childish follies, 
the display of which was not long ago asserted as a cher- 
ished right, but they still hold with silly persistence to a 
few survivals of customs inconsistent with the prevalent 
spirit of good feeling and good sense. The initiations into 
certain societies still exiiibit something of stupid folly, and 
occasionally of brutal inconsiderateness ; but they do not 
belong properly with the present order of things, and their 
suppression may be looketl for befoi'e long as a result of the 
common-sense and right feeling of the students themselves. 
The intention to behave like gentlemen is strong among 
them, and the spirit of gentlemanliness is, perhaps, as vig- 
orous among them and as widely diffused as in society at 
large. The sense of honor is apt to be bhmt outside as 
well as inside college walls, and it is not to be expected that 
students should have a keener perception of the fine and 
incessant requirements of personal honor than that which 
prevails in the world from which they come. 

The dependence of health and vigor of mind upon health 
and vigor of body is now the fundamental proposition in 
every rational scheme of education. The provision made at 
Harvard for the exercise required for health and for normal 



22 FOUR AMERICAN UXIVERSITIES 

phj'sical development is probcably as thorough, complete, and 
intelligent as can be found in any institution of learning. 
It marks a new stage in the improvement of the university 
as a place of education, and there is nothing in which the 
life of the student of to-day differs more widely from that 
of preceding generations of American undergraduates tlian 
in the attention given to the care of the body, in the large 
share which athletic sports hold among college interests, 
and in the strong feeling aroused by athletic competitions. 
College games and athletic sports properly regarded are 
at once promotive of the intellectual interests of the stu- 
dents and subordinate to them. They are tiie sports of 
gentlemen who do not aim at ])rofessional excellence as oars- 
men or players of any game. The exact limit between pro- 
fessional and amateur excellence in them is not easily de- 
fined ; but the difference in spirit animating professional and 
amateur sport is obvious. Tiie interest and the worth of 
sport as part of college discipline and amusement are les- 
senetl and its character is degraded in proportion as the ])ar- 
ticipants in it strive for excellence other than tliat whicli 
may be attained by a youth wlio does not allow it to be- 
come tlie chief object of his efforts, but who holds it in its 
right place as a pleasant and animating recreation and a 
manly accomplislinient. Fair play, honor to opponents, 
cheerful acceptance of defeat, modest acceptance of victory, 
are conditions essential to contests between gentlemen, and 
if they cannot be secured in intercollegiate contests, these 
contests must cease. The entrance of the professional spirit 
into college athletics has tended to promote tlie vice of 
betting upon the issue of the games. Harvard has taken 
the lead in the reform of tlie objectionable practices that 
have lowered the character of college athletic sports. 



//. I R I •. 1 IW UXI I -EKSl r Y 



23 



J!ut while iitliletics have of hito occupied ;i hirger share 
of i)iibliu uttentioii than the other parts of college training, 
and have seemed consequently to have a disproportionate 
development in college life, the ])rogress of Harvard as an 
institution of mental etlucation and of learning, and her 
advance towards the position of a true university, have been 
such as greatly to change her relative ])osition to all other 
institutions of a simiiai' sort in the I'nited States. The last 
twenty-five years li;ive been a period of transition foi' her 
from the traditional nai'i'ow academic system to a new, lib- 
eral, and comprehensive system, in which the ideal of an 
American university- -a different ideal from the English or 




(.'LAMilil-bV MALL, CAMliKIUliK 



•24 FOUR AMEEWAN VXIVERSITIES 

the German — has been gradually working itself out. The 
result is not yet complete, the ideal not yet realized, so far 
as the realization of such an ideal may be possible, but the 
progress towards it is stead3^ No work of greater impor- 
tance to the nation has been going on anywhere during this 
time. It deserves far greater popular attention than it has 
received, far gi-eater popular support. It has become an in- 
stitution in which an American may feel a legitimate pride. 
An outline can render but little of the life of a great 
figure, but it may show its proportions. Harvard College 
offers this year nearly three hundred elective courses of 
instruction, most of them requiring attendance of three 
hours a week at recitation or lecture.* The main intent 
of an undergraduate student .should be to secure instruction 
in those branches of knowledge likely to be most service- 
able for the general culture of his miiul, and for providing 
him with intellectual tastes and resources. It is a misuse 
of rare opportunities if he confines himself to studies of a 
technically scientific character, or to such as partake of the 
character of tlie professional studies to which he intends to 
give his later years of preparation for life in the world. It 
may, indeed, be his misfortune that, obliged by narrow 
means to hasten his entrance to a profession which shall 
provide him with a livelihood, he is compelled to neglect 
the generous and liberalizing studies of letters and tlic arts, 
studies known collectively under the fortunate term of the 
humanities, in order to concentrate himself on special lines 
of professional work. But everj'thing is done at Harvard 
to prevent or to diminish this necessity by the provision of 
scholarships b}' which a considerable part of the cost of lii^ 

* In lSyi3-'J4 tlie total number of lioui's of instruction given weekly was 761. 



llAJt\'A nil iMVKllSITY 



25 



education is lifted from the shoulders of the poor, indus- 
trious, and capable student. The cost of living at Harvard 
on the most economical basis consistent with health, and 
including the tuition fee of $150, may be set at from $iO() 
to S500 a year. In tiiis sum are not included the expenses 
of the long vacation or the cost of clothes. Liberal pro- 
vision is made for the aid of the poorer students, the total 




STCDEXt's room in CLAVEULKY UALL, CAMBRIDGE 



sum annually distributed amounting to not less than $50,000. 
This is given mainly in the form of scholarships, of which 
ever}' year not less than one hundred and twenty-five, vary- 
ing in amount from $90 to $300, are assigned to needy and 
meritorious students, so that the actual cost of education at 
Harvard for a student receiving a scholarship of the average 



26 FOUR AMERICAS UNIVERSITIES 

value of $236 need not be more than about the same sum. 
He can, without excessive labor, secure his degree of K.W. in 
three years, and if lie has been wise in the selection of liis 
studies, he will be able to enter one of the professional 
schools already in possession of faculties disciplined by se- 
rious training, and of a general mental culture of inesti- 
mable worth for the happiness and refinement of life. 

The number of teachers giving instruction in the under- 
graduate de])artraent and the graduate school is not far 
from one hundred and fifty. 

Ample provision, on a scale not attained elsewhere in 
America, is made for the needs of scientific instruction in 
the biological, chemical, and physical laboratories, in the 
treoloffical and mineralogical cabinets, in the collections of 
natural history, and in the botanical gardens. But the cen- 
tre of the intellectual life of tiie university is to be found 
in the library, which, under the charge of its present emi- 
nent librarian, Mr. Justin Winsor, is administered with a 
liberality and etficienc}' unparalleled in any collegiate libra- 
ry in the world. The college library proper now contains 
about 315,000 volumes and over 300,000 pamphlets, and if 
tiie libraries of the separate schools and class-rooms be 
added, the total number of volumes is more than 430,000. 
The accessions to the university library during the ten 
years from 188-t to 1893 inclusive have been at tlie rate 
of something over 1-1,000 volumes annually. The nninlicr 
of persons making use of the library steadily increases 
from year to year. Seventeen years ago 57 per cent, of 
the students made use of it ; in 1887-88 the proportion for 
the whole college had increased to 89 per cent., for the 
three upper classes to 97 per cent. ; in 1888-89 the respective 
numbers were 87 per cent, and 95 per cent.; in 1892-93 the 




HARVARD nOAT-lIOnSE (IN THE CHARLKS RIVER 



number of students who made no recorded use of the library 
was 4:1 out of a total of 1449. A more striking illustration 
of the general intellectual activity of the undergraduates 
could hardly be found. Every student is allowed to take 
out three volumes at a time, and to change them as often 
as he maj' desire. The total number of volumes (not in- 
cluding those taken out for a single night) taken out in 
1887-88 was 65,639 ; in 1888-89 it was 68,892 ; in 1892-93 it 
was 80,380. The use of books within the library itself is 
constant and increasing. Every facility is provided to make 
its stores accessible and serviceable to the utmost degree. 
There can hardly be a greater advantage to the j'oung 
student, no less than to the old, than this placing at his 
free disposal the treasures of a great library, and there is 
nothing in which a greater contrast is afforded to the com- 
mon practice of most foreign universities. The advanced 
student who returns to Harvard after a residence abroad 
finds in its open library a compensation for whatever other 
advantages a foreign seat of learning may offer. In this 
administration of its librar}'^ Harvard has set a needed and 
beneficial example to all other institutions of learning. A 
natural doubt may, however, arise as to whether a young 



28 FOUR AMERICAN UNIYERSITIES 

student, unaccustomed to the use of books, is likely to make 
judicious use of the opportunity thus put within his reach ; 
but it is to be remembered that his use will generally be 
guided in the first instance by the directions of his instruct- 
ors, and that he will thus gradually learn how to help him- 
self in the vast choice set before him of the books fitted for 
his needs or his entertainment. 

The advice and assistance of teachers is not confined to 
the class-room or the matter of studies. Every studfent on 
his entrance to college is referred to a member of the Fac- 
ulty, who will act as his adviser in regard to all matters in 
which he may stand m need of counsel, such, for instance, 
as a judicious scheme and choice of courses of study, or 
any of his social, economical, and moral interests. The stu- 
dent is thus brought at once into kindly human relations 
with a representative of the college authorities, and no 
parent need be afraid, lest, in sending his son to Harvard, 
he should be left without the help of judicious, disinter- 
ested, and friendly counsel. 

The progress of the university as a true sciiool of learn- 
ing has been nowhei'e more marked of late than in the im- 
provement of its professional schools. In the Law and 
Medical schools this has been brought about mainly by the 
raising of the requirements of admission to them, by bet- 
ter methods and enlarged scope of instruction, by the intro- 
duction of thorough examinations, and l)y insisting upon a 
longer 2)eriod of study as preliminary to the obtaining of a 
degree. The required term of instruction is now at least 
one year longer than it was twenty years ago. The change 
thus wrought in these schools is radical, and their example 
has done much to raise the standard of professional education 
throughout the country. In the Divinity School the change 



HARVARD UXIVERSITY 



29 



has been not less remarkable. The professors have been 
drawn without preference from denominations of widely 
differing creeds, orthodox and liberal alike; they have 
worked together in perfect harmony ; the long tradition 
of high learning in the profession has been maintained by 
them, while their number has been increased, and the range 
of instruction en- 
larged. In all the 
schools the instructors, 
no less than the pu- 
pils, have felt the ben- 
efit of these changes, 
and the spirit of en- 
ergetic industry which 
animates them reacts 
to its advantage upon 
the undergraduate de- 
partment. 

But the most im- 
portant development 
of the university in 
late years has been 
that of Avhat is now 
known as the Gradu- 
ate School — that is, 
the department of ad- 
vanced studies pur- 
sued by gi-aduates who 
intend to devote them- 
selves to teaching, or 
to independent investi- 
gation and research in 




CORK HALL 



30 FOUR AMEliWAN UNIVERSITIES 

some one of the higher branches of knowledge, or to gen- 
eral self-culture. The importance of these studies as essen- 
tial to the progress of civilization is felt in proportion to 
the growth of the nation in wealth and material power. 
The United States cannot maintain an equal position with 
other nations in this progress except b}' the fostering of 
these highest intellectual pursuits, and no duty is more im- 
perative upon our leading schools of learning than to offer 
the best attainable instruction in those studies by which 
knowledge may be increased, the level of intellectual life 
elevated, and the consequent moral improvement of the 
community secured. The teachers capable of giving this 
indispensable instruction are. comparatively few, and the 
means for providing them with appropriate salaries, as well as 
with the leisure requisite for their own progress, are scanty 
as yet in every American institution of learning. It is not 
claiming too much to say that Harvard is, in these respects 
at least, not inferior to any other university in the United 
States. Indeed, in certain respects she distinctly leads the 
advance; for she embraces within the university not only 
the schools of professional training, but also a collection 
of separate institutions devoted to the increase of special 
knowledge, and so equipped as to make them the rivals of 
the best that could be brought into comparison with them 
in any country. Such is the Museum of Comparative Zool- 
ogy, whose magnificent collections, due to the genius, the 
labors, and the liberality of the two Agassizes, father and 
son, afford to the student of zoology means as ample and as 
Avell arranged to assist him in the progress of his studies as 
any museum in the world ; such, too, is the Botanical Muse- 
um, established by the great master of American botany, 
Asa Gray, and presided over by teachers worth}' of their 



HARVARU VNIYERSITY 



31 



master; such are the Chemical Laboratory, and the Jeffer- 
son Physical Laboratory, in which the most modern means 
and appliances are provided for the prosecution of a science 
that with astonishing rapidity is extending its triumphs in 
the conquest of new fields from nature; such is the Ob- 
servatory, for which the genius and devotion of successive 
directors, and the generous endowments of private persons, 
have secured a position in the first rank of astronomical 
observatories. All these and other important subsidiary 




'i^'-:-^!^?^^^^^ 



MUSKUM OK COMPARATIVE ZOOLOHY 



..-■»,- -'a*.. 



institutions are open to pupils prepared to take advantage 
of the means of instruction which they offer. For students 
of other subjects in science, and of literature and philoso- 
jihy, advanced instruction is provided according to their 
needs and proficiency, while the resources which the library 
affords are even more important to the graduate than the 
undergraduate student. The school is strengthened by 
fellowships and scholarships which have been endowed by 



32 FOUS AMERICAN UNIVER^ITIEH 

benefactors of the university, " for the encouragement," to 
borrow the terms of one of these endowments, " of a higher, 
broader, and more thorough scholarship than is required or 
expected of undergraduates in all sound literature or learn- 
ing," or, in the words of another of the deeds of gift, " for 
assisting to support one or more pupils . . . preferably such 
as shall express the determination to devote their lives to 
the advancement of theoretic science and original investiga- 
tion." In the year 1893-94 there were 256 students regis- 
tered in this department, and there seems to be good reason 
to anticipate that its growth will henceforth be steady. To 
raise the standard of intellectual work in tliis country near- 
er to the highest level attained by it elsewhere, to attract 
disinterested scholars in gi'eater numbers, men who pursue 
their studies primarily for the sake of pure learning, and 
not for a livelihood, scholars who in their turn shall lead 
the advance of knowledge, and help to supply the ever- 
increasing need of higher intelligence and better culture, of 
competent criticism, efficient suggestion and wise leader- 
ship in politics and in society, men who shall keep alive in 
themselves and quicken in others the best ideals of individ- 
ual and national life, who shall be fitted to guide and help 
and instruct and inspire the youth of each generation — this 
is the chief problem which Harvard and other of our prin- 
cipal schools of learning are now engaged in solving. 

The real vitality of a university deserving of the name 
depends, indeed, not so inuch on the excellence and abun- 
dance of the direct guidance which it offers along the most 
advanced lines of the ever-advancing forces of learning, as 
upon the spirit with which it inspires its students. The 
highest end of the highest education is not anything which 
can be directly taught, but is tlie consummation of all 



":»; . f "* V sa?^ffi;fQi 




UAIIVAIW iXlVERSITT 35 

studies. It is the final result of intellectual culture in the 
(levelopmeat of the breadth, serenity, and solidity of mind, 
and in the attainment of that complete self-possession which 
finds expression in character. To secure this end, one means, 
above all, is requisite, which has, strangely enough, been 
greatly neglected in our schemes of education — namely, the 
culture of the faculty of imagination. For it is by means 
of this faculty, acting in conjunction with and under the 
control of reason, that the true nature and relative im- 
portance of the objects of study are to be discovered, and 
the attainment of knowledge for practical use brought into 
connection with the pursuit of truth as the intellectual basis 
of conduct. The largest acquisitions of knowledge remain 
barren unless quickened by the imagination into vital ele- 
ments of moral discipline and growth. The activity of the 
imagination is needed not more for the interpretation of his- 
tory than for the appreciation of the significance of poetic 
literature and the other fine arts, whose chief interest con- 
sists not in their works as independent products, but as ex- 
pressions of the inner life and highest powers of man ; it is 
needed not more for the recognition of the nature and the 
discovery of the solution of social problems than for the or- 
dering of the multifarious facts of the exact sciences so as 
to discriminate the principles or laws of which each fact is 
an illustration. Mathematics, physical and natural science, 
philology in its widest acceptance, all mere knowledge, in 
fine, affords the material for the ultimate work of the im- 
agination, and it is therefore the culture of the imagination 
which, if the advanced courses of study in the university 
are to be properly ordered, demands attention beyond that 
which, in the oldest and most famous institutions of learn- 
ing, has hitherto been accorded to it. The neglect with 



36 FOUR AMERICAN UyiVERSITIES 

which the studies directly contributing to this culture have 
been treated is easily to be accounted for historically, and 
the conditions of our actual civilization are hardly more 
favorable for them than those of the past have been. It is 
true, indeed, that their need has become more obvious with 
the splendid rapidity of the progress in mere knowledge 
characteristic of our own times. Progress in knoAvledge 
does not necessarily involve a corresponding contempora- 
neous progress in intelligence, wisdom, and virtue ; on the 
contrar}', its common, immediate, and direct effect is to 
strengthen the forces of materialisin, and the chief efforts 
of our higher institutions of learning should therefore be 
directed to provide such education as may serve more or 
less to counteract this prevailing tendency. And this edu- 
cation is to be found, and found only, in the intelligent 
and comprehensive study of those arts in which men have 
sought to express themselves — their thoughts, feelings, and 
emotions — in forms of beauty. For it is these arts, prop- 
erly called the humanities, which set the standard of human 
attainment, and it is the study of them that affords the 
best culture of the imagination. This study should be 
regarded as the proper accompaniment and crown of all 
other studies. All others are enlightened and elevated by 
it. The studies that nourish the soul, that afford permanent 
resources of delight and recreation, that maintain ideals 
of conduct, and develop those sympathies u])on which the 
progress and welfare of society depend, are the studies that 
quicken and nourish the imagination and are vivified and 
moraUzed by it. The greatest need of Harvard, as of other 
universities, at the present time, is that of endowments for 
fuller instruction in the learning which tends to the direct 
cultivation of this faculty. 







THE WASHINGTON KLM 



A striking illustration of the general indifference to it 
is afforded at Harvard by the disregard of the influence of 
architecture as an element in education, as shown in the 
character of the buildings erected in the last half-century, 
and which are evidences of the material prosperity of the 
university. Harvard by no means stands alone in her neg- 
lect in this respect. No one denies that their surroundings 
have a subtle and strong, though perhaps unconsciously re- 
ceived, influence upon the disposition of men. No one de- 
nies that culture of the eye in the recognition and appre- 

3* 



38 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERtilTIES 

ciation of beauties of form, color, and proportion is de- 
sirable ; that the pleasure if not the happiness of life is in- 
creased by enjoyment of these things. No one denies that 
noble and beautiful buildings, in noble association and well 
designed for the purposes for which they are intended, be- 
come more and more impressive from generation to genera- 
tion as they become more richly invested with associations 
of human interest. The j'outh who lives surrounded by 
beautiful and dignified buildings to which inspiring memo- 
ries belong cannot but be strongly affected, less or more, 
consciously or unconsciously, according to his native sensi- 
bilities and perceptions, by the constant presence of objects 
that, while pleasing and refining the eye, cultivate his sense 
of beauty, and arouse not merely poetic emotion, but his 
s_vmpathy with the spirit and generous efforts of his distant 
predecessors. His inward nature tates on an impress from 
the outer sight. He may need help at first to discern the 
expression in the work of the beauty which it embodies, 
but he needs no help to feel its dignity and venerableness. 
The value of the influence of noble architecture, simple as 
it may be, at a great seat of education, especially in our 
country, is hardly to be overestimated ; and yet it has been 
either absolutely disregarded at Harvard, or, if recognized, 
tlie attempt to secure buildings that should exert this in- 
fluence has been little short of total failure. If some great 
benefactoi- of the university should arise, ready to do a work 
tliat should hand down his name in ever-increasing honor 
with posterity, he might require the destruction of all the 
buildings erected in the last half-century, and their recon- 
struction with simple and beautiful design, in mutually 
helpful, harmonious, and effective relation to each other, 
so that the outward aspect of the university should better 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



39 



consist with its object as a place for the best education of 
the j'outh of the nation. Sucli a superb work of patriotism 
is hardly to be expected in this generation, but at some time 
it must be accomplished, by individual or by public means, 
if the university is ever to fulfil one of its most important 
functions. 

Conspicuous as Harvard is, there is no wonder that she 
is the object of constant criticism. So long as this criticism 
is honest and founded upon knowledge, there is nothing but 
good in it. But the peculiar position which Harvard occu- 
pies exposes her to much criticism that is ignorant, unfair, 
and at times malevolent. Absolutely independent as she is 
in matters of religion of sectarian relations, she lacks the 
support of any denomination, and is exposed to attack from 
newspapers which, nominally religious, are actually secta- 
rian in character, and have at heart the special interest 
of denominational institutions of learning. Her old motto, 
" Christo et Ecclesice,^'' Harvard translates literally, " To 
Christ and His Church" — the Church that embraces all 
mankind. Her position is not acceptable to sectaries, and 



1%. 



r*pj 



'^y'/'-" 






At'STIN HAIL 



40 FOUR AMERICAN VXIVERSITIES 

the very strength which she derives from it exposes her to 
many an imbittered assault. Another but inferior source 
of unfair criticism has its origin in the disappointments 
which occur among the large body of her pupils and their 
friends. Among a thousand students there will always be 
a proportion of failures, and another proportion to which 
the special opportunities of any given institution will prove 
unfitted. Both these classes are tempted to find excuses 
for their failure in defects of the institution, either imag- 
inary, or exaggerated and admitting of remedy. A worth- 
less student, who has made a sorry affair of his college 
course, vents his spleen in misrepresentations of the college 
which coidd not save him in his own despite. But Harvard 
courts publicity. She has nothing but gain to anticipate 
from it. Even were it not so, she would still court it ; for 
her ruling desire is not for her own credit and success, but 
for the best progress of university education. Harvard has 
at least educated herself so far that jealousy is not a ruling 
element in her character. There is no institution of learn- 
ing in the world that makes a more candid and full expo- 
sition of itself from year to year than that which she 
makes in the Annual Keports of her President and Treas- 
urer, with the accompanying reports of the heads of her 
different departments. They afford as complete and exact 
a view as possible of the actual state of the university, and 
they may be had by any one for the asking. The state- 
ment of the Treasurer is always a remarkable and inter- 
esting document. It presents a detailed account of the 
finances of the university — its investments, receipts, and ex- 
penditures. The value of such a statement consists not 
only in its effect in maintaining public confidence in the 
careful management of the funds in the hands of the cor- 







A STUKKT IN CAMBIIIDCE 



poration, but also in its laying open for public comment 
and criticism the cost of each department of the university 
and exhibiting its needs. It is well understood that a uni- 
versity, like a hospital, should always be poor, in the sense 
of finding its income insufficient for the demand upon it, 
and of constantly expending all its available means for the 
promotion of the objects for which it exists. The invested 
funds of Harvard increase b}^ gift or legacy to the amount 
of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. For the past 
ten years the average amount of this annual increase has 
been $350,000. Large as this sum is. Harvard stands in 
need of much more. Her total invested funds amounted 



42 FOUR AMERICAN VyiVJCRSITIES 

at the close of her last financial year, July 31, 1893, to 
$8,390,543 — a sum inadequate to supply the means for 
such services to the community as she is prepared to ren- 
der, provided only that she has the requisite income; a 
paltry sum in comparison with the wealth of her gradu- 
ates, and in its paltriness discreditable not only to them, 
but to the men of wealth in the nation at large, whose 
privilege no less than whose duty it is to provide from 
their superabundant means for the higher education of tlie 
people. Harvard needs at this moment, in order to fulfil 
her functions satisfactorily, an immediate endowment of 
not less than five millions, with steady annual accessions 
in proportion to the steady increase of the claims upon her, 
to enlarge the scope and variety of her teachings ; to pro- 
mote original work by which knowledge shall be increased ; 
to provide salaries and pensions for her teachers such as 
shall give them a livelihood appropriate to their calling and 
social position, and to relieve them from anxiety in regard 
to the years when they shall be no longer capable of active 
service. 

But the true life of a university depends finally not so 
much on the abundance of its means as on the character of 
those who use them, on the spirit that animates its admin- 
istrators and instructors, and on their individual capacity 
to exercise a right influence upon their pupils. Harvard 
has been fortunate in a long succession of eminent teach- 
ers, who have won from generation to generation the re- 
spect of their pupils, and have set to them an example of 
devotion to duty, and of simplicity and dignity of life. It 
is a piece of conspicuous good-fortune that at the present 
time, when the transition is going on from the traditional 
methods and conditions of a colonial college to the forms 



llAUVAliD VMVKRSITT 43 

and requirements of a national university, she has at her 
head one of the ablest, most foresighted, and liberal-mind- 
ed of public servants. 

The steady and solid progress made by Harvard during 
the twenty-five years of President Eliot's administration af- 
fords the promise of future advance.* No pause is possible 
in the course of an institution which by its very nature is 
forced to advance with the progress of knowledge and with 
the ever-increasing demands of the community. The stand- 
ard of such a seat of learning is continually rising. Each 
forward step compels the next. It can, indeed, never reach 
its aim, never perfectly fulfil its function. Its ideal remains 
constantly unattainable, though constantly more clearly 
defined and more distinctlj'^ visible. And yet the perma- 
nent features of this ideal never vary. They bear always 
the fair proportions of a school where truth is sought by 
research, inquiry, and speculation ; where the youth of a 
nation are taught to obtain mastery of themselves by the 
discipline of character as well as \>y acquisition of knowl- 
edge ; where they are helped to the understanding of their 
nature and duties as social beings, and are instructed not 
only in matters serviceable to their individual interests, but 
in the nobler learning by which they are inspired to subor- 
dinate their personal concerns to the good of the commu- 
nity. The ideal university is the training -place of the 
wisest, strongest, and best men. Such a university Harvard 
aspires to become. 

* The exceptional character of the services of President Eliot in gniding the 
development of the university during this period, and the " results which have 
made his administration the most remarkable in her historv," are ably set forth 
in an article by Professor Dunbar, in the Harvard Oraduatesi, Magazine for 
June, 1894. 



YALE UNIVEKSITY 





w 



Whit.' Hull and BeiUi'li'y Ha 
rtce Hull. 



Dlvliiily Schc 





1 



i • 



Lawrance Hall. 

IVERSTTY 



Batlell CLapel. 
Funiam HaIL 



filoine t^boratory. 



Kent laboratory. Diniri^-Ran. 

Library. 



P«ahody Mafi«iini. Oymnatinm. 

Dwleht Hall. Alnmnl Hall. 



; Wliitp Hall ivii.l Berkoivy Hsll. 
111! Irfee Mall. 



Dlvliiily School. 



IliifflvKI 



SMfflvId DcWiilllIc School. 




VaodiTljilt Hail. 



Suulli Miiltlle. Lyceum. Trenaury. North Middle. Old Chnpel. 

Oeborii Hull ^'*'«'> ""l'- 



North Coliegi-. 

Lnwranu Hall- 



BatloU Cbnpel. 
Kariiam UalL 



BmO'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF YALE UNIVERSITY 



II 



^^aft^ST is hard to give a systematic account of Yale 






^. .- University, past or present, because Yale itself 
aX\\ is not systematically arranged, and never has 
been. At no time in its history have its meth- 
ods and traditions borne the impress of a consistent plan. 
It is the result of a growth, often quite unforeseen by those 
in authorit}', through which the collegiate school of 1700 
developed with slow steps into the college of 1800 and the 
university of 1900. 

Yale College was founded, after a fashion, at the begin- 
ning of the last century, along the north shore of Long 
Island Sound. For many years it was difficult to say what 
it was or where it belonged. It was not called a college, 
but a collegiate school, because the General Assembly of 
Connecticut was afraid to attract the notice of England to 
any undertaking of this kind. Such notice would certainly 
have cost the college its charter, and might readily have 
pi'oduced the same result to the colony itself. Its teaching- 
force did not at first receive the names of president and 
professors, but was obliged to content itself with the less 
honorable titles of "rector" and "tutors.'" Even the loca- 
tion of the school Avas very uncertain, and it was oftentimes 
a house divided against itself. The poet's description of 
Harvard's earliest beginnings. 



48 FOVB AMERICAN VX1VERSITIE8 

"Two nephews of the President 
And the Professor's son- 
Lord ! how the Seniors ordered round 
Tliat Freshman class of one!" 

could not be applied to Yale ; for if the rector lived at Mil- 
ford and the tutors at Say brook, the Senior class was located 
at the former place and the Freshman class at the latter. 
It was not until the removal of the school to New Haven in 
1716, and the amendment of its chai'ter in 1745, that it suc- 
cessively attained a local habitation and a name. 

The teaching in those early days was meagre enough. 
Even after the institution had assumed the name of a col- 
lege, the president was often the only man competent to 
give anything like professorial instruction. A professorship 
of divinity was founded in ll-^Ci, and one of mathematics 
and natural philosophy in 1770. But it was not until the 
administration of Timothy Dwight, the grandfather of the 
present incumbent, that a group of professorships was es- 
tablished which gave a standard of scholarship to the insti- 
tution, and an element of permanence to the academic body. 
With rare discernment. President Dwight secured the ser- 
vices of three young men of first-rate talent — Kingsle}' in 
the classics, Day in mathematics, and Silliman in natural 
science — who remained in the service of the college for 
nearly half a century, and who made it a college in fact as 
well as in name. 

It was hardly a Congregational college to the extent 
which is often assumed. Undoubtedly its foundation was 
stimulated by the distrust which the more conservative ele- 
ment in Massachusetts and Connecticut felt towards the 
liberal tendencies of Harvard at the end of the seventeenth 
century. The hopes and interests of men like the Mathers 



YALE UXIVERSlTY 



■«9 



were centred in Yale for this reason. But it is none tlie less 
true that Yale was a Connecticut college rather than a Con- 
gregational one, and was put in the hands of Congregational 
ministers as being the chief educational authorities of the 
colony. A large part of the money given to the college in 
its early days came from Episcopalians. Eiihu Yale was 




PRESIDENT DWir.HT 



as much an Episcopalian as he was any tiling; and Dean 
Berkeley was a prominent though somewhat erratic mem- 
ber of the English Establishment. The college itself was 
once, at least, near going over to Episcopacy — so near that 
poor old Increase Mather, in Boston, died of fright. In the 
middle of the last century we not infrequently find Episco- 

4 



50 FOUR AMERIG.iJU^UNIVERtSlTIES 

pal ministers preaching in the college chapel as guests of 
the college authorities. The odium, theolocjlcuni was not so 
constant a force in those days in Connecticut as it perhaps 
was in Massachusetts. Connecticut Congregationalism was 
often a political and social matter rather than a religious 
one ; and in its capacity' as an " established " Church it had 
enough affinity with Episcopalianism to cause the members 
of these two Churches to be banded together in the closing 
years of the last century in defence alike against the Quaker, 
the Methodist, the infidel, or the democrat, as necessity 
might demand. 

The differences between the Congregationalism of Con- 
necticut and of Massachusetts had much to do with the dif- 
ferent lines of development taken by Yale and Harvard 
respectively. The fierce schism between orthodox and Uni- 
tarian in Massachusetts found little response in Connecticut, 
where the lines of conflict were social and political rather 
than intellectual. There was in Connecticut almost none of 
the awakening and ferment which filled eastern Massachu- 
setts for at least two generations. As we look back upon 
Yale life or Connecticut life in the early years of the nine- 
teenth century, we may admit that it was less varied and 
less active than the life of Harvard or of Massachusetts. 
But this difference was not without its benefits to Yale. 
The very absence of intellectual controversy gave it broader 
political sympathies and affiliations. Those matters which 
formed the starting-point of much of the life of Boston and 
of Harvard tended to withdraw Boston and Harvard from 
contact with the nation as a whole. People who did not 
understand the Unitarian controversy were frightened and 
repelled by the name of Unitarianism. The fact that Mas- 
sachusetts was always ready to take an advanced position 



TALK UNIVERSITY 



51 



carried her too far for the rest of the United States to fol- 
low. It was so in the Constitutional Convention of 1788 ; 
it was so in the antislavery movement ; it was so in many 
essential matters which affected the development of Harvard 
College. By contrast witii Harvard, Yale had a national 
character. It did not move too fast for the people of the 
United States as a whole. In 1800, as in 1894, it was a 







7i 



ti#i|.y«lHu:l 




VALE COLLEGE, 1"93 



national college. It drew its students from all parts of the 
country, to a far greater degree than Harvard. It was then, 
as now, pre-eminently the mother of colleges. Columbia 
and Princeton, in the eighteenth century, like Johns Hop. 
kins and Cornell and a hundred other colleges in the nine- 
teenth, have had Yale graduates as their first presidents. 
Another characteristic of Yale which has brought her 



52 FOUR AMEIUVAN VSIVERSITIES 

closer to the national life than Harvard has been her rela- 
tive poverty. Professors and students have both liad to 
work for a living. There has been, unfortunately, no op- 
portunity to cultivate, as Harvard has done, the literary 
tastes and graces. Yale has not been able to number 
among her professors names like those of Lowell, Long- 
fellow, and Holmes. The Yale professors have been men 
engaged in actual teaching- work, and unfortunately too 
often overworked in their teaching. It would have been a 
great thing for Yale could she have strengthened the liter- 
ary side of her life. Yet there were advantages in the 
universal necessity of hard work without the graces. It 
created an esprit de corps which would otherwise have been 
imattainable. It fostered a democratic spirit among the 
students. Poor and rich were associated together in their 
work and in their play. Men were judged by their strength 
and efficiency as men rather than by their social or 2>ecuni- 
ar}^ standing in the outside world. This democratic stand- 
ard of judgment was an important element both in bring- 
ing Yale into closer contact and fuller S3nnpathy with the 
nation as a whole, and in educating the students them- 
selves in moral standards. At Yale, to a greater extent 
than at Harvard, the value of the education is due to the 
college life even more than the college instruction. In this 
respect, as in many others, the history of Yale has been 
like that of some of the English public schools. Even 
where the course and the methods of teaching have been 
most open to criticism, there has been an influence in 
college life that could not be weighed or measured, and 
that sometimes could hardly be understood by those who 
felt it, wiiich made men of those who came under its 
influence, and which caused graduates to look back upon 



YALE UNIVERSITY 55 

their j'cars of Yale life with an almost unreasoning affec- 
tion. 

The comparative poverty, the strength of college feel- 
ings and traditions, and tiie absence of contact with a great 
intellectual centre like Boston, made the development of 
the univei-sity idea slower at Vale than at Harvard. As 
early as 1S13 professional schools began to group them- 
selves about Yale College, but they were loosely attached 
to it, and formed no organic part of the whole. They de- 
pended upon the eminence of individual instructors for their 
success, and witii the death of those instructors they sank 
into comparative insignificance. The counter-attractions of 
similar schools in large cities, with their superior facilities 
for attending courts or hospitals, put Yale at a disadvan- 
tage in these matters, as compared with Harvard, Columbia, 
or the University of Pennsylvania — a disadvantage which, 
in many of the more practical lines of study, is still felt to- 
day. Nevertheless, the medical school attained great emi- 
nence under the leadership of Nathan Smith, the law school 
had the benefit of an instructor of extraordinary ability in 
Samuel J. Hitchcock, while the early history of the divinity 
school is associated with the still more celebrated name of 
Nathaniel W. Taylor. But the connection of these schools 
with Yale College scarcely consisted in anything more than 
the fact that the names of their professors and students 
appeared in the same catalogue. It was not until 1843, 
nearly twenty years after its first foundation, that the law 
school was authorized to give degrees, nor were such de- 
grees given by the theological school until 1867. 

A most important forward step was taken in ISiG by the 
establishment of courses of graduate instruction. Little 
was expected from this project at the time. It received 



56 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

but scant support from the college authorities. Had it not 
been for the disinterestedness of its leaders, it would have 
been in constant danger of abandonment. But it met a 
real need in giving advanced instruction to those who were 
pursuing science for its own sake, independent of the 
promise of diplomas on the one hand, or the restrictions of 
college life on the other. The first courses were in chem- 
istry. Instruction in engineering was soon added. The 
school received the warm support of a group of men engaged 
in tlie publication of the American Journal of Science, with 
James D. Dana at their head. The scope of instruction 
was gradually widened until its courses included not merely 
physical science, but philology and politics. Degrees were 
first given in 1S52. It was not until nearly ten years later 
that the liberal gifts of Mr. Sheffield gave the means of 
establishing systematic courses of undergraduate instruc- 
tion in the school, which from that time forth bore his 
name. 

Both in its origin and in its subsequent development the 
Sheffield Scientific School has been what its name implies — 
a scientific school as distinct from a technical one. It has 
attempted to teach principles rather than details. It has not 
attempted, as so many other schools have done, to teach a 
man things he would otherwise learn in the shop or the 
mine, but to teach him what he would not learn in the shop 
or the mine. Its leaders have had no sympathy with the 
idea that college instruction could take the place of practi- 
cal experience. They have tried so to shape their instruc- 
tion as to enable the Sheffield graduate to get the fuUest 
benefit from practical experience. They do not try to teach 
mechanical details, which change from year to year or from 
shop to shop, but scientific principles which shall enable a 



YAIE UNIVERSITY 59 

man to turn all details to the best advantage. They use a 
gi'cat deal of laboratory work, but the laboratory work is 
treated as a means of stud}' rather than as an end of study. 
It is one of the advantages of the Yale man in starting life 
that he knows liow much he has to learn. He does not con- 
ceive himself equal to the master -mechanic on his own 
ground. He readily concedes to the master-mechanic the 
superiority in some points of professional skill; and the 
mechanic is, for tliat very reason, all tlie more ready to 
recognize the college man's superiority in others. 

It has cost Professor Brush and his associates some hard 
battles to enforce this view of the matter. At this very 
day the Sheffield School is in danger of losing grants from 
the national government amounting to $25,000 a year be- 
cause of its attitude on these points. The school has for 
more than thirt}' years enjoyed the appropriations made 
to the State of Connecticut for the endowment of colleges 
in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Before the accept- 
ance of the grant the college stated exactly what it pro- 
posed to do. It furnished instruction in theoretical princi- 
ples underlying mechanics and agriculture, and gave free 
tuition to a large number of Connecticut students. The 
scientific study of agriculture in America may almost be 
said to have arisen from the work of Professor Johnson 
and his co-laborers at Yale. It was here that the impulse 
started whicli led to the founding of agricultural experiment 
stations all over the country. But the agricultural interests 
are dissatisfied because instruction is not given in the prac- 
tical operations of farming. "With some honorable excep- 
tions, the farmers do not appreciate scientific work as the 
mechanics appreciate it. They want a college to teach the 
things which farmers know, rather than those which farm- 



60 FOUR AMEHICAN VXIVERSITIES 

ers do not know. The mechanical interests, on the other 
hand, are eager for new knowledge, and have given the 
warmest recognition to the college for its services in de- 
veloping it. 

In its present condition the Sheifield Scientific School 
oifers the student a choice of some seven courses, according 
to tlie line of work for which the student would prepare 
himself — one for the chemist, one for the biologist, one 
for the civil engineer, one for the mechanical engineer, 
one for the mining engineer, one for the agriculturist, 
one for the general business man. But each of these is 
a college course rather than a purely professional one. 
The Sheffield students have had in times past and present 
the benefit of instruction from men whose eminence was 
far removed from the ordinary courses of applied science 
— men like William D. Whitney or Thomas R. Lounsbury, 
Daniel C. Gilman or Francis A. Walker. The scientific 
course has led men to their professions by a shorter road 
than the academic, and without the study of Greek, but 
it lias been, in its underlying principles, a collegiate course 
rather than a technical one. 

The separate existence of two collegiate departments 
side by side has constituted a distinguishing feature of 
Yale development. Tlie Lawrence Scientific School at 
Harvard has never been of anything like co-ordinate im- 
portance with the college proper. The schools of Mines 
at Columbia and of Science at Cornell have made the ele- 
ment of technical training more prominent tlian it has 
been at Yale. Not a few of Yale's friends have looked 
at this double collegiate development with regret, and 
have believed that each department suffered from tlie 
lack of those elements for which tlie other was distin- 




KKAK OK IHE CHAPKL 



YALE UNIVERSITY 63 

guishutl. The Sheflficld Scientific Scliooi, with its inde- 
pendent character and freer methods, attracted the pro- 
gressive elements, and left tlie academic department in 
constant danger of over - conservatism ; the monopoly by 
the academic department of traditions, of religious influ- 
ences, and of many of the things that did so much to 
characterize college life, made the course in the scientific 
school seem somewhat imperfect by contrast ; while Har- 
vard, with its fuller elective course and more progressive, 
not to say destructive, spirit, was combining the freedom 
of a scientific school with the traditions of a college. The 
two things at Yale seemed to be drifting further and fur- 
ther apart. But within the last twenty years a great 
change has taken place for the better. It began in 1872, 
when six representatives of the alumni were admitted to 
a place in the corporation of the college. In itself this 
change amounted to little, for the clerical element in the 
corporation was left in a majority, and could do anything 
it chose without let or hinderance ; but it was significant 
and fruitful in giving a degree of publicity to the man- 
agement of the college which it had never before pos- 
sessed, and in bringing the alumni into fuller co-operation 
and sympathy with the college government. 

Meantime a change was going on in the faculty as well 
as in the corporation. The administration of President 
Woolsey, which terminated in 1871, had borne the impress 
of his personality in every detail. A man of tremendous 
force, first-class scholarship, and high ideals, he had secured 
fellow-workers of the same sort, and had infused the whole 
college with a spirit of thorough work and lofty aims 
which has been worth more to it than anything else in its 
whole history. But President Woolsey was born before 



64 FOUU AilEIilCAy US^IVERSITIES 

tlie days of modern science ; and though he acquainted 
himself with its results, he scarcely sympathized with its 
fundamental spirit. His attitude towards science was not 
unlike that of Sir George Cornewall Lewis or Professor 
Jowett ; and his force of character and purpose was so 
great as to hold the whole college to his own lines of 
thought. His successor was a man of less intensity of 
purpose, and though conservative himself, did not keep 
the work of the college from broadening. 

In 1876 the progressive element in the academic faculty 
became strong enough to begin the introduction of the 
elective system in Junior and Senior j'ears. In ISS-i it 
was carried still further — not to the extent which pre- 
vailed at Harvard, but sufficientl}^ far to stimulate the in- 
tellectual life of the college and increase the opportunity 
for active work in new lines. In 1880, with the accession 
of President Dwight, the scientific school obtained its due 
recognition as a co-ordinate department of the university, 
and the way was paved for greater co-operation between 
the different parts than had previously been possible. 
Meantime the life of the students in the two schools had 
become assimilated much more rapidly than the courses of 
study. This was chiefly due to the increasing develop- 
ment of athletics as a factor in Yale life. When the stu- 
dents of the two departments worked side by side in the 
boat, on the diamond, and in the still fiercer character 
school of the foot-ball field, no narrow traditions of college 
life or college association could prevent the recognition of 
prowess, the formation of friendships, and the mutual in- 
fluence on chai'acter of the men in the two de])artments. 

Thus a separation, which seemed at one time to involve 
some danger to the intellectual and social development of 



5MiA' UmVEliSITY 67 

Yale, and to force the students to a choice between science 
witliout tradition on the one hand, or tradition without sci- 
ence on the other, has proved in the end a benefit. It has 
enabled the university to meet at once the needs of those 
who must shorten their period of professional study and 
those who must lengthen it. To the former, the Sheffield 
School offers a combination of college life and professional 
study in a three years' course. To the latter, the college 
offers a full four years' coui'se, which is but a preparation 
for subsequent professional training. The separation fur- 
ther allows a freedom in the choice of courses of study, 
Avithout that danger of random election of easy optionals 
against which the Harvard authorities have so constantly 
been compelled to fight. It enables the system of pre- 
scribed courses of study and examination to be carried out 
to a very considerable degree without involving the at- 
tempt to force all types of intellect into one mould. 

There is reason to hope that the closer co-operation 
between the college and the scientific school is but the 
beginning of a similar tendency with respect to other de- 
partments. In his championship of the university idea, 
President Dwight has done away with much of the spirit 
of isolation which once prevailed. He has a number of 
difficulties to overcome, but the spirit of the age is on his 
side. We know more about the connection betw^een differ- 
ent branches of knowledge than we did thirty years ago. 
The process of specialization has been accomplished by an 
increase of mutual dependence, and the different depart- 
ments of the university have come to recognize this. The 
scientific school has long had the co-operation of the art 
school in parts of its instruction. The academic depart- 
ment has now begun to seek the same co-operation. In 



68 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

the courses of graduate instruction, students of every de- 
partment, undergraduate and professional alike, meet side 
by side with mutual advantage. In all the special schools 
there have been men — like Baldwin in Law, Fisher in 
Church History, or "Weir in Art — whose woi'k is as indis- 
pensable to the non- professional student as to the profes- 
sional. The various collections, chiefly in the Peabody 
Museum, have a usefulness not bounded by the lines of 
any department. The work of a paleontologist like Marsh, 
or of geologists and mineralogists like the Danas, is not 
for any one class alone, but for the whole scientific world. 
The increase of laboratory ^vork, whether in chemistry, 
or physics, or mineralogy, or biology, or psychology, has 
tended to bring students of different depaitments more 
and more together ; and a similar result is accomplished 
by gatherings like the mathematical club, the classical 
club, the modern - language club, the philosophical club, 
or the political-science club, where undergraduates, grad- 
uates, professional students, and instructors meet on an 
equal footing to read and discuss papers on subjects of 
common interest. 

"With university extension — that is, with the effort to 
lecture to classes outside of the membership of the uni- 
versity itself — Yale has had little to do. This is not so 
much from lack of sympathy with the movement as from 
lack of time on the part of the instructors. Their strength 
is so fully occupied with the regular students that they 
have little left to devote to extra ones. For the same rea- 
son Yale has discouraged the attendance of " special " stu- 
dents who are not graduates of any college nor pursuing 
any of the recognized courses for a degree. It may be 
occasionally a hardship to exclude a zealous man from 



TALE VXIVERSITY 71 

special privileges, but. in the majority of cases it is a worse 
hardship to allow a man who has more zeal than train- 
ing to take the time of an already overworked instructor 
from the teaching of his regular students. If a man (or 
woman) is a college graduate, Yale will offer him what- 
ever facilities she has available. If a man is not a col- 
lege graduate, the rule is that he must study in one of 
the regular courses provided for tiie attainment of a de- 
gree. 

To the graduate of any college Yale offers the choice 
of more than two hundred courses of instruction. Twenty- 
four of these are in psychology, ethics, and pedagogics ; 
twent3'-nine in political science and history; twenty -six 
in Oriental languages and Biblical literature; thirty- two 
in classical philology; thirty- three in modern languages 
and literature ; forty in natural and physical science ; 
twenty -five in mathematics, pure and applied. Besides 
these, there are courses in drawing, painting, and art his- 
tory, in music, and in physical culture. It is a question 
whether the philosojjhical department of any university in 
Germany offers as wide a range of teaching. Among all 
these courses the graduate has absolute freedom of choice. 
It is assumed he knows what he wants, and is able with 
the advice of his instructors to select that which best fits 
his individual case. He can study for a degree or not, 
exactly as he pleases. The Yale degree of Ph.D. is not 
given for any defined course or specified amount of work, 
but for high scientific attainment, of which evidence is 
given by theses embodying original research. 

Side by side with the courses of graduate instruction, and 
partly coincident with them, we have the work of the pro- 
fessional schools — in theology, law, medicine, and art. In 



72 FOUM AMERICAN VNIVERSITIES 

each of these there is a prescribed course of instruction, 
usually occupying three years, and leading to a degree or 
diploma at the end. In the law school, however, the de- 
gree of LL.B. is given at the end of two years ; and for 
those who are able to study longer, courses are offered lead- 
ing to the degrees of M.L. and D.C.L. In the theological 
school nearly all the students are college graduates ; in the 
other professional schools the non-graduates are in the ma- 
jorit}'. In this last respect Yale is at a disadvantage as 
compared with Harvard or Columbia. The effort, which 
the Columbia authorities have so successfull}"^ carried out, of 
making the fourth year of the college course serve at the 
same time for the lirst year of professional study, has not 
found its counterpart in Yale. There are several reasons 
for this. In the fii'st place, the professional schools have 
grown up on an independent basis, and are reluctant to 
sacrifice any part of the separate jurisdiction which they 
have acquired. In the second place, the university has no 
large disposable endowments whose income can be used in 
smoothing the way for a combination. Every part has to 
work for a living, and tlierefoi'e has to be left free to get it 
in the best way it can. Finally, in spite of all that has 
been done to broaden the courses of instruction, the under- 
graduate departments have a separate life of their own, and 
an c-sjjrit de corps of their own, which make the problem 
of fusion at Yale much harder than at Columbia, or even 
at Harvard. For though the instruction of undergradu- 
ate, graduate, and professional students is losing its separate 
character, though they meet in the same laboratories and 
tiie same lecture-rooms, nevertheless there remains mucli in 
the social and intellectual life of the several parts which 
continues absolutely separate. The college remains a col- 




THF OLD FENCE 



lege, even though it has become part of a university. A 
striking instance of this separateness of undergraduate life 
is seen in the ver_y slight effect produced by the admission 
of women as graduate students in 1S92. It scarcely affected 
the college life in any definable way. For years past, in- 
deed, women had been attending some of the graduate 
classes by individual arrangement with the instructor, and 
no one had even been troubled by it. It was thought better 
to recognize the position and work of such students, and 
give them the degree of Ph.D. if they deserved it. Since 
this recognition there are naturally a good many more 
women in the graduate classes than there were before; and 
where graduate and undergraduate instruction are coinci- 
dent it has resulted in their admission to undergraduate 
class-rooms. But it has not in any sense encroached upon 



76 



FOUR AMERICAX VXIVERSITIES 



the privacy of college life, or affected the traditions con- 
nected with it. To a man who knows what college life 
really means, the recent action in the graduate department 
at Yale does not involve the admission of women to Yale 
College any more than it involves the admission of men to 
Yassar College. It rather involves an emphasis on the es- 
sential distinction between the college life which has been 
developed bj' men and women separately' and the univer- 
sity work of training specialists, where there need be no 
distinction of sex. 

The two undergraduate departments at Yale have certain 
obvious points of difference from one another ; they have cer- 
tain less obvious but more fundamental points of similarity 

whicli distinguish them 
from the professional 
schools, and even from 
the undergraduate de- 
partment of a university 
like Harvard. They dif- 
fer from one another in 
that the required studies 
of the "academic" de- 
l^artment are largely 
classical, while those of 
the SheflReld School are 
])redominantly scientilic ; 
in the fact that one gives 
the degree of B.A. after 
four years' study, while 
the other gives the de- 
gree of B.S. after three years ; and in the fact that one has 
two years of prescribed work and afterwards a direct choice 




SKCLL AND BONES HALL 



YALK UNIVERSITY 79 

of electives, while the other lias one year of prescribed work 
and afterwards a choice of courses or groups of study, in- 
stead of individual studies. They also differ in the fact that 
the academic department has the dormitory system devel- 
oped in a high degree, while the scientiiic school does not; 
so that the faculty of the former is obliged to take greater 
oversight over the conduct of its students than is the case 
with the latter. But both departments are alike in requiring 
from their students a high degree of regularity as to at- 
tendance and continuous study. The constant pressure to 
work is not only much stricter than in the graduate or pro- 
fessional schools, but stricter than in the undergraduate 
department of Harvard or Princeton or almost any Ameri- 
can college. Harvard is strict about her degrees and lax 
about the previous course of her students. If a man has 
been idle for four years he will lose his degree. Yale, on 
the other hand, has no room for idlers in her elective halls. 
Her facilities are so far overcrowded that every bad man 
elbows a good man" out of place. She has no room for 
the vast number of "special" students — a few of them 
deserving, the majority incompetent — who clamor for en- 
trance at ever}' large university. A man must pass cei'tain 
examinations or he cannot enter Yale. He must be regu- 
lar in his attendance or he will be sent home. He must 
maintain a certain standard of scholarship or he will be 
" dropped." This stringency of requirement is the heritage 
which Yale has received from President Woolsey and the 
group of men who worked under him. However much the 
undergraduate may chafe under it or rebel against it, it is 
this which makes college life and college reputation what 
it is. Xo bod}' of young men, left to go their several ways, 
good or bad, will work out the mass of college traditions 



80 FOUR AMERICAN VNIVBUSITIES 

and college sentiments which help to mould and make a 
man in a way that mere book study can never do. 

There is no room in an article like this to describe these 
college traditions and customs in detail; nor are the asso- 
ciations that gather round the P'ence, or " Mor\''s," or the 
Old Brick Kow, of a kind which can readily be reproduced 
in black and white. Every college graduate must fill the 
})icture out for himself. It is enough to say that the special 
characteristic of Yale life which has distinguished it from 
other colleges has been a keener intensity of competition 
than exists almost anywhere else. It shows itself in every 
form of efifort — literary and athletic, political and social. 
For a few coveted positions on the college journals there 
are dozens of men toiling months or years to offer the best 
essays or stories or reports of current events. For a few 
positions of honor on the athletic teams there are hundreds 
of men running their regular courses of exercise, and filling 
the sidewalks of New Haven with costumes calculated to 
strike the stranger aghast. And so in every department of 
college life. The contest takes its keenest and perhaps most 
questionable form in connection with the secret-society S3's- 
tem. The societies of the academic department at Yale 
differ from those of most other colleges in not running- 
through the course, but changing in successive years of 
study. No man who is ambitious for college success can 
afford to rest on his laurels in the earlier years of his course. 
An election to one of the societies of Sophomore or Junior 
year is chiefly thought of as a stepping-stone towards the 
higher honor of election into the narrower circle of " Skull 
and Bones," " Scroll and Key," or " Wolfs Head." As the 
time for Senior-society elections draws nigh, the suspense 
on the part of the candidates becomes reall}' terrible. AViien 



TALE VNIVERSITT 83 

tlie afternoon of election finally arrives, the scene is perhaps 
the most dramatic in college life. There is a crowd gath- 
ered on the campus — all interested, and some fearfully so. 
One Senior after another appears from the different society 
halls, and silently seeks his man amid, the throng. At last 
he finds him ; a tap on the shoulder sends a Junior to his 
rjom on what is probably the happiest walk he has ever 
taken ; there is a moment's burst of applause from the 
crowd, varying in intensity according to the popularity of 
the man chosen, but always given with good-will, and then 
every one relapses into anxious expectation, until the whole 
series of elections has been given out. On the whole, the 
Senior-society choices are given with conscientious fairness. 
There are mistakes made, sometimes bad ones, especially 
mistakes of omission; but they are as a rule hona fide mis- 
takes of judgment, and not the results of personal unfriend- 
liness or chicane. There is a good deal of wire-pulling 
among those who hope to receive the honor, but surprising, 
ly little among those who are to award it. Opinions differ 
as to the merits of the Yale society system ; but there can 
be no question that it is a characteristic product of Yale 
life, with its intensity of effort, its high valuation of college 
judgments and college successes, and its constant tension, 
which will allow no one to rest within himself, but makes 
him a part of the community in which he dwells. 

Can Yale keep these characteristics unimpaired amid in- 
creasing numbers of students and increasing complexity of 
outside demands ? Can it preserve its distinctive features as 
a college in the midst of its widening work as a university ? 
Can it meet the varying intellectual necessities of modern 
life without sacrificine: the democratic traditions which have 
had so strong an influence upon character ? Can it give the 



84 FOUR AilERIVAX VSIVEBSITIES 

special education which the community asks without endan- 
gering the broader education which has produced genera- 
tions of " all round " men, trained morally as well as intel- 
lectually ? These are questions which every large college 
has to face. They are not peculiar to Yale. If Yale feels 
their difficulty most, it is because she is the largest repre- 
sentative of the traditional American college idea, which 
Harvard has, to all intents and purposes, abandoned. 

The difficulty is enhanced by several factors outside of the 
educational sphere. In the first place, the demands of mod- 
ern life make teaching more expensive. There are more 
things to teach, and therefore there is need of more men, 
while in each line there is more competition for the services 
of first-rate men, both inside and outside the teaching pro- 
fession. The day has passed when college professors formed 
a class by themselves, who would not or could not engage 
in work elsewhere. "With the increasing study of science in 
its various forms there has come increased contact between 
university life and business life. The scientific man can 
often, if not generally, make more money by expert work 
than by teaching; and under such circumstances it is not 
always easy for the university to retain his services. The 
social demands upon the professors have taken a different 
shape from what they had forty years ago. Plain living 
and high thinking is no longer the ideal of professional suc- 
cess in any line. Under these circumstances a college with 
limited funds finds it hard to secure enough men of the right 
kind. The increase in the number of students enhances 
rather than lessens the difficulty. Additional students are 
often a source of expense rather than of profit. Teaching 
is not a work which can be performed by wholesale. No 
teacher, not even the most talented, can do for a class of 




STATUE OF ABRAHAM PIERSON 



YALE VXIVERSITY 87 

one hundred what he would do for a class of ten. Each in- 
crease of numbers makes it all the more difficult to avoid 
the danger of having the class too large, or the instructor 
too small ; nor is an increase of tuition fees to be thought 
of except as a last resort. 

Side by side with this difficulty comes a still greater dan- 
ger, in the effect of modern life on tlie students themselves. 
While the standard of life throughout the community was 
simple, there was every chance for the democratic spirit of 
equality to assert itself. The difference between what the 
rich student and the poor student could command was com- 
paratively slight. It was at most a difference in rooms and 
in food, in dress and in comforts — differences which the 
health}' public sentiment of a college could afford to disre- 
gard. But to-day there are differences between rich and 
poor which no one can wholly despise, even though he may 
respect the poor man more than his rich companion. Each 
complication of social Ufe inside and outside of the college 
creates a reason for legitimate expenditure of money, which 
prevents the poor man from feeling an absolute equality 
with the rich. The problem of lessening college expenses is 
one of vital importance for the future of American college 
life, and is perhaps the most serious difficulty with which 
the members of the Yale faculty have to contend. 

But in meeting these difficulties Yale has certain marked 
and strong advantages. To begin with, all the traditions of 
Yale's social life work in the direction of valuing men for 
their character rather than their money or their antece- 
dents. Though the college standard of character may be 
imperfect, and though college sentiment may tolerate wrong 
methods of study, and evasions in dealing with the authori- 
ties, the general fact remains that, such as the standards are, 



88 



FOVIi AMERICAN UyiVERSITIES 



they are applied vig- 
orousl\' and im]iar- 
tially ; that there is 
a respect for work 
and a respect for 
unselfishness — a re- 
spect for all that 
constitutes a gen- 
tleman in the best 
sense — that renders 
futile any attempt 
to make money take 
the place of charac- 
ter, or social antece- 
dents take the place 
of social qualities. 

Those who 
thought that the 
democratic spirit of 
Yale was bound up 
with the Spartan 
simplicity of the 
Old Brick Row 
have been happily 
disappointed. The gifts of Farnara and Durfee, of Law- 
rence and White, of Welch and Vanderbilt, have provided the 
students with larger comforts without distorting their moral 
standards. There are parts of the secret - society system 
which are in more or less constant danger of becoming rich 
men's cliques and undermining the democratic spirit ; but 
there is every reason to hope that this danger will be suc- 
cessfully resisted in the future, as it has been in the past. 




OBSERVATORY 



y.UA' UyiVEKHlTY 



89 



Tlie development of college athletics has been of great 
service in counteracting some of the dangerous tendencies 
of the day. Open to criticism as athletics may be for their 
unnecessary expense, for the betting which goes on in con- 
nection with them, and for the distorted views which they 
encoui-age as to the relative importance of different tilings 
in life, the\' yet have a place in education which is of over- 
whelming importance. The physical training which they 
involve, good as it may be, is but a small part of the benefit 
achieved. The moral training is greater. Where scores of 
men are worlcing hard for athletic honor, and hundreds 
more are infected b\' tlieir spirit, the moral force of such an 
emulation is not to be despised. Critics may object, and do 
object, that athletic prowess is unduly exalted, and that it 
involves distortion of 
facts to rate the best 
football - player o r 
best oarsman higher 
than the best scholar 
or best debater. But 
the critic is not 
wholly right in tliis. 
There is a disposition 
in the college world 
to recognize in the 
highest degree any- 
thing which redounds 
to the credit of the 
college. Let a stu- 
dent write something 
which brings honor to 
his college, whether "scroll and kkt" hall 




90 FOUR AMERICAN VNIVERSITIES 

ia science or literature, and tliei'e is no limit to the recogni- 
tion he receives from his fellows. Let a football-player 
sti'ive to win glory for himself instead of for his college, 
and his fellows have no use for him. What the critic deems 
to be preference for the body over the mind is in no small 
measure preference for collective aims over individual ones. 
It may be a short-sighted view of the matter to think of 
the high-stand man as working for himself, and the athlete 
as working for his college. Yet it is one which contains a 
large element of truth ; and the honor paid to college ath- 
letes is based on a healthful recognition of this half-truth 
which the critic so often overlooks. 

Athletics, if properly managed, have still another moral 
advantage in training the students to honor a non-com- 
mercial standard of success. In these days, when the 
almighty dollar counts for so much, this training is of first- 
rate importance. Of course athletics may be so managed as 
to be worse than useless in this respect. The least taint of 
professionalism, however slight, destroys the whole good ; 
the growth of betting endangers it. Yale has by constant 
effort kept clear of professionalism, and much of her suc- 
cess in athletics has been due to this fact. Betting is 
harder to deal with, and constitutes a real evil, but not one 
for which athletics is so directly responsible as many people 
assume. On the whole, as athletics have been managed at 
Yale under the constant advice of the alumni, and without 
either fear or favor from the faculty, they have done great 
good and little harm, both physically and morally. 

If there is danger of distorted sense of proportion among 
the students, it is to be remedied not by less encouragement 
to athletics, but by more encouragement to study. Yale 
emphatically reeds more money for teaching purposes. 



YALK CXIVERSITY 91 

Gifts of dormitories have done good ; gifts like those for the 
Peabody Museum, for the Kent and Sloane laboratories, for 
lecture -halls like Osborn and "Wincliestor, have done still 
more good; but they are wholly inadequate to meet the 
public demands. So fast have the numbers grown tiiat 
there is to-day not a lecture-hall in Yale College which will 
accommodate all the students who want to take a single 
course of instruction, much less a laboratory which will give 
the room needed for the study of chemistry to all who ask 
it. Whatever can be done in the way of educational de- 
velopment without mone\' or with limited money Yale is 
trying to do. Her success is attested by her growth in 
numbers and public recognition, and yet more b\' the un- 
swerving loyalty of her members in every capacity. 



PlilXCETON UNIVEKt^ITY 



^ 




Qv. 




in 



OPINIONS vary about the character and value of 
life in the various great districts into which cli- 
mate, race, and otiier factors divide the domain 
' . of the United States, but not about the existence 
of different characteristics. There was once an enterprising 
"educator" who located his university, as he extensively 
advertised, "midway between the North and the South, the 
East and the West," that he might secure the advantages 
of all the cardinal virtues in their totality for his nursling. 
But the points of the compass and the essential features of 
the three or four great zones into which our country natu- 
rally falls alike refuse to blend. Fortunate land if only 
sufficient difference persists to pi'event the stagnation of 
perfect homogeneity ! To be cosmopolitan in character is 
in our time to be commonplace. So far the older, pre-rev- 
olutionary colleges of America have escaped this reproach ; 
the new-comers are still too young to declare a settled and 
mature individuality. 

Princeton therefore accepts with gladness the place so 
often assigned her as a type, and finds honor in leading 
and guiding a great cohort to the warfare which sound 
education makes the condition of its favor. In a land 
where the conditions of overgrown, self - conceited, and 
boisterous youth prevail as they do in ours, there are but 



96 FOUM AMERICAN VNIVERSITIES 

two barriers against a relapse into barbarism — morality 
and intelligence ; these, of course, are both included in the 
highest education, and the former is s^^nonymous, except 
for the generation or two which discards the motive power 
of faith and runs by inertia, with religion. But within the 
limits of so broad a generalization there is abundant room 
for wide divergence in detail. While it is to be hoped that 
all the great universities seek the same treasure, they vary 
widely in their traits and in their methods. The interac- 
tion between tliem is very constant, and develops strong 
personality. Students and their advisers are instinctively, 
thougli often not consciously, aware of it, and in general 
the ]iatronage of each seat of learning corresponds to its 
liistoric development. 

The divergence of opinions at New Haven which led to 
tlie foundation, in 1746, of Princeton was in some respects 
but another manifestation of the essential difference be- 
tween Puritan and Covenanter. They were always har- 
monious enough in the presence of a common danger, but, 
whether in the mother-land or in America, they were also 
sufficiently divided by race and instinct to seek divergent 
paths in the absence of ])ressure from without. Accord- 
ingly a place was chosen in the very heart of the Middle 
States, as they then were the focus of the Scotch and 
Scotch-Irish life, whicli was destined to transform itself into 
that pure Americanism which has been in evidence from 
the days of the Mecklenburg declaration until the present. 
To this influence was associated two very potent ones 
with neither Scotch nor Scotch -Irish blood, namely, that 
of the English Quakers on one side, and that of the neigh- 
borinff Dutch to the north and the northwest on the 
other. The catholicitv, tlierefore, of the college was as 



riascEToy vxi vmt.sir r 



9? 



characteristic in its foundation as it has been in its history', 
especially as four of the first board of trustees were mem- 
bers of the Church of England. And so, at the suggestion 
of the colonial Governor, Eelcher, the first great structure 
was christened Nassau Hall, after William III., "of glori- 
ous memory." Just as the JS'ew England of the last centu- 




FRANCIS L. PATTON 



ry now stretches westward within the northern line of 
States to the Pacific, the Middle States have kept their 
relative size and influence in the broad band of common- 
wealths which they have either populated entirely or share 
with men of New England origin across the Mississippi 
Valley and the Rocky Mountains to the Golden Gate. 
1 



98 FOUU AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

While the Princeton, whicli is still in New Jersey, does 
not equal in numbers the Yale in New Haven or the Har- 
vard in Cambridge, she does not yield to them in her 
wider influence, for she has been the mother of many 
colleges, about twenty -five directly and indirectly, which 
are now scattered from Rhode Island — for Brown Uni- 
versity is in a sense her daughter — to California.* Many 
of these have long since put off all tutelage to become 
centres of independent influence, but there is a sense in 
which with their parent the^^ belong to one system and 
represent one definite aim. The bonds of friendship with 
New England have never been severed, they have rather 
been strengthened by separation, and knit firmer in the 
interaction of systems sufficiently different to foster indi- 
viduality, but enough alilce to cherish in each respect and 
admiration for the other. On the other side her relations 
with the South have been close and intimate. The history 
of the southern Atlantic and Gulf States might almost be 
written in the biographies of Princeton graduates. In 
proof of this we liav^e but to recall names like those of 



* The following are some of the colleges founded by Princeton men 
or under Princeton auspices: Brown University; Union College; Ham- 
ilton College, which sprang out of Uamilton Oueida Academy, founded 
by Rev. Samuel Kirkhmd, but was organized as a college under the au- 
spices of Yale; Washington College, Pennsylvania; Jefferson College, 
Pennsylvania; Wasliiiiglon-Lee University, which was first Liberty Hall, 
then Washington College, and is now as above ; Hampden - Sidney Col- 
lege ; Washington College, Tennessee ; Greenville College, Tennessee ; the 
University of North Carolina ; Winsborough College, South Carolina ; the 
University of Georgia ; the University of Ohio ; Cumberland University, 
Tennessee; Austin College, Texas ; the University of Cincinnati ; Wasli- 
ington College, Indiana ; Transylvania University, Kentucky. For the 
others, facts sufficient to justify publication are not in the author's pos- 
session. 



PRINCETON VNIVKllUlTY 



99 



James Madison, Ephraim Brevard, Gunning Bedford ; of 
the Lees, Bayards, Dabneys, Davies, Pendletons, Breckin- 
ridges, Caldwells, Crawfords, Baches, Ilagers, and Joiins; 
and many others which shine in the pages of Princeton 
history. It was her arduous labor, moreover, which de- 
stroyed the virus of French influence in Southern educa- 
tion, inoculated as it was into Virginia and the Carolinas 
by Quesnay's scheme of a French Academy and bj^ Jeffer- 
son's sympathy. It was likewise through the teaching of 
her sons that religious tolerance was secured in Southern 
colonies dominated by the English Church. 

Princeton, moreover, stands second to none of our Amer- 
ican colleges in the part her graduates have played in the 
general history of the United States. Her roll of fame is 




JAMES McCOSH, D.D , I.l.D. 



100 FOUM AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

long in proportion to her numbers. It would be a ^yaste 
of space to enumerate names, but she has given to her 
country nine of the fifteen college graduates who sat in 
the Constitutional Convention, one Pi'esident, two Vice- 
Presidents, four Justices of the Supreme Court — one a 
Chief Justice — five Attorney- Generals, and fifteen other 
cabinet ofiicers, twenty -eight Governors of States, a hun- 
dred and seventy -one Senators and Congressmen, a hun- 
dred and thirty -six judges, forty -three college presidents, 
and upwards of two hundred professors, half of whom 
have been appointed since Dr. McCosh became President. 
It is a safe assertion, therefore, that in the Middle and 
Soutliern States no single educational influence has been 
as powerful as that of Princeton. 

Her relation to the histor}' of the United States stands 
visibly embodied in Nassau Hall, the most historic college 
or university building in America. When first completed 
it was visited by travellers as the largest building then in 
the colonies. Within the walls of this now venerable and 
still stately pile were quartered the troops of contending 
British and Americans in the Kevolutionary war. The 
Continental Congress used it for their sittings when driven 
from Philadelphia, and adjourned in 1TS3 to attend the 
college Commencement in a body. Its walls still bear the 
imprints of the cannon-balls used in the battle of Prince- 
ton, and on them hangs a portrait of Washington, painted 
by Peale. It was paid for with the money given as a per- 
sonal gift by the former for the use of the building by his 
troops, and fills the frame which once contained the effigy 
of George II. 

Nine signers of the Declaration of Independence fre- 
quented its halls — two were graduates, and three wei-e 








■- >^U<^^ 







NASSAU HALL 



officers of the corporation which controlled it — and its 
windows blazed with liij-ht in a grand illumination when 
the news of the sinrnin": reached the town. Aaron Burr 
studied in its class-rooms, and his body was borne from its 
walls to the neighboring graveyard. 

For all these reasons, therefore — her age, her history, 
her leadership in founding colleges throughout the South 
and middle West, and in furnishing them with professors, 
the distinctive character of her education, and the relation 
she bears to one of the three great race elements which 
have combined in our aboriginal and primitive American- 
ism — Princeton asserts a position among the foremost uni- 
versities of America, and struggles to fulfil the solemn 
7* 



102 FOUR AMERICAN UyiVERHITlES 

duties of a vanguard iu the development of a certain type 
of life, manners, and thought. 

How far she is justified in the hope that her future will 
shine with greater lustre than her past can only be shown 
in an account of her equipment and the plan of education 
to which she adheres. The corporate title is the College 
of New Jersey, and in that State lies the town of Prince- 
ton, midway on the old King's Highway, which became 
later the stage route between New York and Philadelphia 
— the two great cities which so far outstrip all others of 
the Middle States in intelligence, wealth, and population. 
The village lies on the first swell of the foot-hills which 
develop into the Appalachian range. The university build- 
ings stand in a commanding line along the crest of this 
ridge, overlooking to the southward the farmsteads, or- 
chards, and fertile fields which fill the horizon as it 
stretches away in green billows to the sea. The soil of 
the township is loam underlaid by sand and gravel, and 
thus the inhabitants enjoy good natural drainage, ample 
water supply, a fruitful husbandry, and a mild and genial 
climate. The nearer view caught by the approaching trav- 
eller, and the more distant one from the windows of the ex- 
press trains which hurry by three miles to the south, alike 
display a scene of rural beauty and rich landscape which 
recalls Gray's familiar lines on a distant view of Eton. 

The effect of this central position upon the organic life of 
the college with its correlated and affiliated schools has been 
marked throughout her history. She has never been slack in 
her duty to her own State, whose leaders in politics and the 
Church have largely been trained by her ; but she has been 
from the beginning unprovincial to a very high degree, as 
the introductory remarks to this sketch abundantly prove. 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 105 

AVhile endowed and wisely ruled by a corporation the ma- 
jority of which consisted of men of one State and one de- 
nomination, yet the minority has been most influential 
througliout, and her advantages of site and studies have 
drawn to her lecture-rooms since the beginning men from 
each metropolis, from all the States, and from everv re- 
ligious sect. The ease of access to Princeton — and once 
in a lifetime every American, several times in each year 
many Americans, pass between the commercial and political 
capitals of the land— will always insure her against narrow- 
ness either in creed or clientage. On the other hand, her 
peaceful home amid groves and lawns and gardens will al- 
ways assure the " atmosphere of peaceful studies," so diffi- 
cult to create elsewhere than in the repose of a country 
neighborhood. 

It is well known that Princeton has no School of Medi- 
cine, though she has a thoroughly equipped School of Biol- 
ogy. She has had and will almost certainly have again a 
School of Law. The School of Theology is closely allied, 
but has not the same corporate relation to the university 
as the divinity schools of Yale and Harvard, which, either 
wholly or partly, are free from denominational control. It 
is, however, the largest in the land, and independent and 
autonomous as it is, has an identical moral force as reo-ards 
the completeness of university life in the academic character 
of Princeton. For our purposes, therefore, and under these 
reservations, we shall use the caption at the head of this 
article inclusively. All told, but excluding the residences of 
professors, there are in the town thirty -nine completed 
buildings devoted to educational purposes. 

It must be confessed that the arrangement of this great 
number of edifices, most of them large and commodious, 



106 FOVR AMERICAN VNIVEriKiriES 

many of them ven- costly and architecturally admirable, 
while presenting a splendid front to the street, is otherwise 
the result of hazard and caprice. At least that is the effect 
produced by the commixture of a series of plans formed 
under successive boards of trustees, with varying notions of 
the ultimate size of the college. Nature alone has forced 
the semblance of a plan by the conformation and contour of 
the grassy expanses which they fill. Another element of 
unit}' is the material of which most are constructed, a dur- 
able brownish sandstone, soft in color and variegated in 
tints, which comes from quarries either close at hand or at 
no great distance, near either Newark or Trenton. But the 
general effect is the pleasing one of order in disorder, and 
the splendid trees and rich lawns form a kind of solvent, in 
which the virtues of each ingredient appear perhaps at 
their best. 

First to be mentioned of that which these buildings con- 
tain are the libraries, which number in the aggregate a hun- 
dred and sixtj'-six thousand volumes, excluding pamphlets, 
and which by the liberality of their management and gen- 
erous gifts to their funds constitute in a high sense the 
focus of academic life in Princeton. As far as statistics 
have been available, it is believed that the number of vol- 
umes distributed to readers is a trifle larger in proportion 
than anywhere else. There are also five museums; namely, 
of the History of Art, of Geology and Pal.Tontology, of 
Comparative Anatomy and Natural History, of Mineralogy, 
and of Biblical Antiquities. The first three of these have 
large buildings, provided with galleries, lecture-rooms, and 
workshops. There are two astronomical observatories, one 
of which contains the great equatorial of twenty- three 
inches' aperture, and all the appurtenances of such a splen- 



PRIXCETOX UXlVEJiHITY 



107 



did instrument on a proportional scale; the other is the ob- 
servatory' of instruction, fully equipped with a nine-and-a- 
half-inch equatorial, with reflecting telescopes, transits, prime 
vertical, chronograpli, and a computation-room, all devoted 
entirely to the use of students. Besides these, there are the 
usual laboratories, physical, chemical, mineralogical, psycho- 
logical, and biological, all on a scale which has been ample 
until within live years. To meet new demands they have 
recently been nearly doubled as to accommodation, and fit- 
ted with the most perfect apparatus. There are in addition 
recitation-rooms and amphitheati'es of various sizes — suffi- 
cient in all for the instruction of a thousand students — a 
speech hall, and the handsome new buildings of the large 
and flourishing literary societies. A¥e have been recalling, 
of course, only structures devoted entirely to strictly educa- 
tional aims. There are in connection with them the splen- 
did Alexander Hall, which is a theatre for commencement 







THE nALSTED OB^RVATORV 



108 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

exercises and other public functions, the handsome Mar- 
quand Chapel, the hall of the religious association, the gym- 
nasium, and eleven dormitories, with chambers for about 
seven hundred students. But these also, like those of the 
other class, are entirely inadequate to even the present wants 
of the university. To preserve that precious collegiate life 
which once characterized all institutions of the higher learn- 
ing in the United States, and which still survives in perfect 
development in Princeton, there must be new and larger 
dormitories, or, better still, hostels or inns or colleges, what- 
ever they should be called, which would attract to their walls 
men of similar tastes and standing, and under the careful 
supervision of the university give their inmates food as well 
as lodging. 

It will no doubt astonish many to know that the cause 
of Princeton's reticence as to her money affairs has not 
been due to opulence. It is true that the munificence of 
her patrons and benefactors for the last quarter of a cen- 
tury has been a superb illustration of private benevolence. 
But it is none the less true that the establishment thus 
created has rendered her endowments and foundations at 
the present low rate of interest ridiculously inadequate. It is 
a well-known paradox that no university can be prosperous 
which is not on the verge of bankruptcy. 

The helmsmen of Princeton's course have been and are 
practical men of wide financial experience and devoted 
loyalty. They have shunned many a hidden rock and 
sunken reef bj' the private liberality of themselves and 
others, but it is becoming evident that the public must soon 
be taken into their confidence. Every student in our great 
universities who pays every fee demanded is yet a founder's 
beneficiary, because the actual cost of his tuition is nearly 



miyCETON VyiVEIiSlTT 1 1 1 

double wbat is ever exacted, and the trifling charge for the 
use of libraries, laboratories, recitation-rooms, and apparatus 
is merely to guard against wanton destruction. It is clear, 
therefore, that every additional student is a charge to the 
foundation, and that educational prosperity may mean pe- 
cuniary impoverishment. Splendid buildings, well-equipped 
libraries, and learned professors draw numbers of students 
and stimulate zeal. They are the permanence of the struct- 
ure, but they do not increase the supply of vital energy 
which must be gathered and expended day by day on every 
incoming and departing generation of eager youth. Tlie 
disproportion between the apparent energy or potential and 
the kinetic or actual work done is preposterous. In fact, if 
it were not for the steady subscriptions of the few unknown 
givers who make \\\> deficiencies, and the self-denying de- 
votion of manj' underpaid workers, the activity of Prince- 
ton would often be curtailed where it is now most benef- 
icent. She has to face the constant diminution of income 
from vested funds, due to the reduced rates of interest. 
The greater number of students calls for more instructors 
and for means to supply the teaching force, to which, as 
has been said, any possible increase of income through tui- 
tion fees would be utterly inadequate. Without contem- 
plating new co-ordinate schools of professional education, 
the existing Faculty of Arts must be increased by the addi- 
tion of several departments and the subdivision of some of 
the existing chairs. The library fund, moreover, is alto- 
gether inadequate. 

The most immediate and crying want of Princeton is 
that of new lecture and recitation halls, and these, if built, 
would, without special endowment, be a charge on the col- 
lege funds, not to speak of the fact that such buildings 



113 FOUR AMERWAX C'MVERSITIES 

yield no revenue. In this connection it should be remarked 
that for the men of rare gifts but slender means who are so 
often the glory of seats of learning, her present endowments 
are far too slender. Fellowships have proven themselves 
to be priceless in the furthering of research and the train- 
ing of teachers. The demand at Princeton by worthy can- 
didates is sadly disproportionate to the supply. Finally, 
many of the wisest friends of the university contemplate 
the establishment in the near future of a School of Law, for 
which of course large funds will be needed. Even aside 
from this last project it seems not too much to say that 
a million dollars could worthily be employed at once. In- 
deed, it would be more frank to say that without it the 
institution will almost immediately be dwarfed in its legiti- 
mate and wholesome development. 

There are fifty professors, twenty -nine instructors, and 
eleven assistants and administrative officers in all the 
Pi'inceton institutions, and a total of about thirteen hundred 
students in all departments. There are also twelve fellow- 
ships, some open only to graduates of Princeton, others, 
as part of the broader university work, open to all candi- 
dates. These yield from four to six hundred dollars a year, 
and enable their holders to devote their entire time to re- 
search. About thirty -five hundred dollars in money or 
gold medals is annually distributed in various prizes to 
stimulate generous endeavor in learning. The number of 
scholarships yielding free tuition to their undergraduate 
holders is eighty. A circle with a radius of six or seven 
miles drawn around the village would include four hun- 
dred and fifty moi-e boys and young men preparing for 
college, including, as it would, the Lawrenceville School, the 
Pennington Academy, and the Princeton School — the three 




: ■^JJ'- — ; — ' — ll 











COA' 






. >. 






THE PRESinENT s tinrsE 



enijiloying in the aggregate a coi-ps of about thirty-five 
masters. The onset of such a battalion of academic forces, 
men and officers, is comparable to that of any great educa- 
tional centre, and in some respects is bej'ond that of most. 
For, in the first place, the teachers and the students have a 
singleness of purpose hard to preserve amid the temptations 
and distractions of large cities; in the second place, Prince- 
ton stands third, if not second, in the number of her stu- 
dents pursuing the strictly academic course — which varies 
but little from that which was once called the college 
course, or the preparatory course for professional training, 
but which is now beginning to be called the education of a 
gentleman — and first in its theological students, who ]nirsue 
the science next akin to philosophy and all humanistic 
learning; and, thirdly, no less than forty -two States fur- 
nish each its quota of students, and there are representa- 
tives from eleven foreign lands. The number of living grad- 
uates is not far from four thousand. 
8 



114 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

The writing of autobiography is always ticklish work, 
and particularly when it is supposed to illustrate heredity. 
In other words, to write your life before you were born, 
while you are living, and after you are dead must be the 
task of either a philosopher or a humorist. Hence, in one 
who is neither, caution in attempting to depict the Prince- 
ton type of education, either in the past or the future, is 
very necessary. As to the past, however, some things are 
clear. Until the first years of Dr. McCosh's brilliant ad- 
ministration the coui'se was almost entirely a required 
one. It was substantially the same as that of other first- 
rate institutions, compounded in well-tried proportions of 
tlie standard specifics — to wit, the classics, mathematics, 
belles-lettres, science, and philosophy. The last two were 
given as much prominence as was comj)atible with old- 
fashioned notions, and the names of Ilenrv, Guyot, and Dod 
will illustrate both their close alliance and the sterling 
character of the doctrine. That there was real vigor and 
initiative in both school and laboratory is proven by names 
like Philip Freneau, Boker, Leland, and "William C. Prime 
in literature and art criticism, or by those of the Alexan- 
ders, Hodges, and Millers in theology and the pulpit, or in 
public life by the long arraj^ of names already given. The 
annals of the medical profession and the bar would afford 
similar testimony. But, on the whole, Princetonians pride 
themselves on their contributions to public life in men of 
action. There has always been something in political 
Calvinism favorable to state founding on lines of liberty 
and authority duly blended, and to administrative and 
public life according to the American type. 

Only the initiated understand how thoroughly unsettled 
are educational theories at the present daj' the world over. 



PRINCETOy UXIVEliSITY 117 

On tlic revival of learning and science after liio war, our 
most ambitious and adventurous youth flocked to Ger- 
many, because she alone was supposed to have solved the 
problem of university education. Several things happened 
in tiie ensuing years as a consequence : a sudden drift from 
the pursuit of letters to the study of linguistics, a tremen- 
dous upheaval of scientific studies, which was wholesome, 
but unduly emphasized their proportionate value in educa- 
tion, a consequent disorganization of the old college plan 
by the aggregation of new professors and departments, and 
an un-American boldness in relying on theory for a solution 
of the new questions, with a corresponding disregard for 
our own very respectable historical growth in the educa- 
tional line. I refrain from recalling the Continental views 
as to text criticism and text-making in the Scriptures and 
the classics, as to state socialism in political science, the 
tremendous emphasis of Teutonism in history, and other 
exotic cuttings in philosophy and science which were at 
once ingrafted on our own stock, wherever their ardent 
discoverers got a seat in pi'ofessorial chairs. 

The eeneral result was utter confusion. As the lieht 
breaks in upon the chaos, we find that common-sense is re- 
asserting itself; the real value of German educational im- 
pulse, immense as it is, is now undei'stood to lie in a judi- 
cious application to our own universities, which are rooted 
in the soil of our separate and independent national life, of 
reforming principle, but of neither foi'eign experience nor 
foreign influence. In fact, our young and daring adven- 
turers are growing older, and the nation draws them back 
to their bearings. A few brilliant and useful experi- 
ments are being tried in lately founded institutions, and 
one of them seems destined to survive. In the case of 

8* 



118 FOUR AMEBIC AX UNIVERSITIES 

the oldest three American universities it is gratifying to 
observe that they have been receptive and cautious, al- 
though in different proportions. The outcome, startling 
enough at first, is yet just what might have been expected. 
With open arras for the new, they have yet taken a firm 
stand on their previous experience, and kept enough of the 
old to preserve unbroken their historic continuity. To il- 
lustrate Princeton's position, it must be explained that of 
the three, Harvard departed furthest from the old norm 
common to all, and Yale has kept the closest. 

By an intricate system of maximum and minimum re- 
quirements, by a minute subdivision of her old standard of 
admission into subjects, and by the addition of certain other 
subjects in science and modern languages, which might be 
substituted for or added to the old, Harvard broadened the 
basis of admission and elevated her demands somewhat. 
Yale modilied her requirements by the addition of modern 
languages, and by demanding improvements in the character 
of preparation in English and the classics. Princeton made 
almost no change except to arra,nge like Harvard a system 
of maximum and minimum requirements ; the former being 
optional, the latter demanding an increase both in the quan- 
tity and the quality of what was to be offered in the old 
subjects. The result is that candidates for all three uni- 
versities are trained side by side in the same schools and 
according; to the same stamlards until within three montlis 
of the entrance examination, when they are separated to be 
specially trained for the respective variations in preparation 
for each. 

The Harvard student is after entrance substantially free 
from all restraint in choice of his studies. Or rather he was, 
for experience has shown tliat lie is not quite fit for such 



mi.WETOy UNIVElifilTT 121 

absolute emancipation, and now an adviser in the faculty 
is provided for every candidate for a degree. In Yale little 
liberty is allowed throughout the Freshman and Sophomore 
years. The high-class students are taught according to tlieir 
capacities in separate divisions, but every Yalensian pursues 
for two years substantially the same general course as every 
other. Even in the Junior and Senior years certain courses 
are prescribed. For the remaining hours the coming teach- 
er, theologian, lawyer, or physician has his free choice from 
a full dish, lavishly provided, of such courses as may lead 
up to his chosen profession or satisfy his personal yearnino's. 
Princeton has had for about the same time, perliaps for a 
little longer, a plan similar but different, and, since the ad- 
vent of Dr. Patton to the presidency, substantially modified. 
All the studies of the Freshman year, except the one mod- 
ern language elected by the student, are required, provision 
being made for advanced instruction. In the Sophomore 
year the standard branches — classics, mathematics, English, 
and history, with a fair proportion of time devoted to sci- 
ence and modern languages — are again required, but in Lat- 
in, Greek, mathematics, and modern languages the student 
elects either two or four hours each as he may choose, thus 
enabling him to devote himself with greater zeal to one or 
other, as he hopes in the higher years to become a candidate 
for honors in literature, science, or philosophy', or as his 
tastes dispose him. 

The prescribed studies of Yale are Greek, Latin, mathe- 
matics, English, and the modern languages, excluding all 
science in the two lower years, and phj'sics, astronomy, 
logic, psychology, and ethics in the two upjier years. To 
these Princeton adds in the lower years logic, history, and 
science — namely, chemistry, botany and zoology ; and in the 



122 FOUR AMERICAN VNIVMRSITIES 

upper years she demands political economy, but leaves as- 
tronomy elective. The time devoted to required studies in 
the upper years is substantially the same in both, with a 
slight preponderance on Princeton's side. 

It will thus be seen that with what seems at first sight a 
striking similarity to that of Yale, the tendency of Prince- 
ton's system is fundamentally different from hers and from 
that of Harvard. In the first place, she has so far jMclded 
to modern agitation as to require of all her graduates a 
knowledge of at least the elements of five natural sciences. 
Two of these, physics and chemistry, have sufficient time 
allotted for great thoroughness. The others are given in 
outlines merely. Some will say such courses have no place 
in university training, and should either be given in pre- 
paratory schools or left to the option of each student. But 
they are nevertheless strenuously supported by others as 
giving every educated man a chance to pursue the natural 
sciences under more competent guidance than can be liad 
in schools, and so fit him to fairly weigh their claims when 
he comes to years of choice, and not disdain them from 
sheer ignorance or inherited prejudice. B}' this procedui-e, 
moreover, no window into the scientific " palace of de- 
light" is darkened for the man of culture. He has his 
glimpse, even if he does not enter in. 

The prescribed studies of the Princeton system, therefore, 
are not alone those of the olden time, but the area is in- 
creased by the addition of much science. General training 
is broadened, if not intensified. These central studies are 
logically and consecutively introduced, and elasticity in pro- 
viding for individual wants is secured as early as Sopho- 
more year by leaving each student free to take more or less 
Latin, Gi"eek, and mathematics, as his inclination prompts, 



PRIXCETUX UXIVEIiSITY 123 

but requiring a substantial amount of these from all. In 
this way it is believed that the value of the much-coveteil 
degree of Bachelor of Arts is in no way diminished, nor its 
meaning materially altered, though everything essential has 
been conceded to the scientific reformers. In the upper 
years the rights of that age of choice which falls some- 
where between nineteen and twenty-four are fully respected 
by providing various and numerous elective courses in clas- 
sics, English and modern languages, in mathematics, the cor- 
related and the natural or biological sciences, and in philoso- 
phy pure and applied in all its branches, in history and its 
cognate subjects. 

And this brings us to the second important peculiarity of 
the Princeton system, in that it is compelled by the struct- 
ural arrangement of the studies of Freshman and Sopho- 
more years to emphasize the grouping of electives. This 
is because the required studies embrace an introduction to 
every great department of elective work. The invaluable 
class of " general excellence " students have the same open 
and inviting door as of old. Tlie subtle influences of the 
time card — that is, of hours allotted to certain branches — 
are all used to draw them to standard subjects. But the 
born or developed specialist has from the opening of Junior 
year a fair chance to rival the other in the race for honors. 
The elective courses fall naturally under certain rubrics in 
their announcement, and the hours are carefully so arranged 
that he may fill all his open time by courses in his chosen 
line of work, and special honors are provided for hira. The 
elective system thus affords the maturer mind of the man 
whose profession is chosen the opportunities either for in- 
tense application to a scholai"'s specialty, or for such a 
propjedeutic as shortens by one year at least, perhaps by 



124 



FOUli AMERICAN UNIVEUSITIES 



two, the special training for life-work in the learned pro- 
fessions. And so, finally, the examinations fall unconscious- 
Iv into a kind of tripos system, in which every regular stu- 
dent puts about two-thirds of his elective time into the 
divisions of some one line of work for thoroughness, and 
another third into a different course for general culture. 

Tiie trend, therefore, of academic training in Princeton 
is towards the cultivation of aptitudes, and the creation of 
that small but precious aristocracy of scholars, men who 
from childhood ride their hobV)y because they early recog- 
nize their gifts, and so attain heights which serve as land- 
marks for the great mass of broadly educated men. At the 




Photographed by R. H. Rose & 9on 



ALEXANDER HAI.l. 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 125 

same time she hopes she has saved for the nation, within 
the hnes of lier iuHiience, that genei'al training whicli made 
educated Americans of earlier generations so habile and 
adroit, and still makes the professional men who have had 
it the superiors of those who have not, whether their work 
is in science, philosophy, or the arts. The circumference 
of liberal training is, according to her system, segmented 
into schools of philosophy, of history and political science, 
of jurisprudence, of classical literature, of art and archajol- 
ogy, of English literature, and of the modern languages for 
the humanities ; on the scientific side, of mathematics, of 
natural and physical science, and of biology. It is hoped 
soon to add a school of Semitic languages, or rather to de- 
velop the one alread}^ tentatively instituted. Most of these 
have both graduate and undergraduate divisions, securing 
thorough scientific treatment according to various stages of 
advancement, and holding out inducements to students of 
the highest attainments. 

If it were possible- to enter more into detail, mention 
should be made among many other important matters of 
the great impetus given to the study of pure* philosophy in 
the last twenty years by the great energy of Dr. McCosh. 
That impulse bids fair to be lasting, for his successor has 
the interests of that department at heart, and at this mo- 
ment the number of students enrolled in it is very large. 
Great care, moreover, has been given to the arrangement 
of English studies. They are ranked equal to any others, 
and the learning and zeal given to their furtiierance awaken 
a feeling of just pride in all Princetonians. 

The School of Science in Princeton was founded with a 
most interesting end in view, to relieve the academic de- 
partment of undue pressure for the introduction of science. 



126 FOUR AMEHICAN UNIVERSITIES 

and to provide a corresponding liberal training for youth 
who wished to substitute modern languages for classics, or 
science for philosophy, to get a somewhat wider knowledge 
of applied mathematics, and to secure manual training in 
the use of apparatus in laboratories and drawing-rooms. 
The degrees to be given were Bachelor, Master, and Doctor 
of Science, and every undergraduate was required to take 
certain academic branches as a liberalizing element in his 
education, but as a supplement a course in civil-engineer- 
ing was incorporated in the same plan. Beautiful quarters, 
with a luxurious equipment, were provided, and the aca- 
demic departments of physics and chemistry were put 
under the same roof. It was supposed that graduates 
of the School of Science would have the same broad 
and untechnical training as other college graduates, and 
would then proceed to their specialties, whatever those 
might be. 

The school has been in operation for twenty-five years, 
and it seems as if an intelligent opinion might now be 
formed as to the success of the original design. There 
was certainlj' no relief to the pressure for admission of 
science into the academic department, as no college in the 
land makes such demands on its required course in that re- 
spect. Last year sixty-two per cent, of its students were in 
the technical departments of Electricity and Civil-Engineer- 
ing, while certainly one-half the remainder were in training 
for other technical professions. The writer recalls a very 
small number who have either pursued graduate work for a 
professional degree, or advanced to learned professions by 
study elsewhere. That is to say, the school has found its 
success and justification elsewhere than was anticipated; 
for the great majority of its graduates are men with practi- 



rjiiyCETO.V VXirERSITY 129 

cal technical training, fitting thoni to enter at once on tlio 
duties of professional life. 

It is hoped and believed by many, however, that powerfid 
influences which have been at work from tlie besrinnins 
may prove equal to realizing tlie aim of general culture, and 
produce a large number of unprofessional graduates. Sucli 
forces are those exerted by the instruction of both scientific 
and academic students in the same classes by instructors in 
psychology, politics, and literature. All scientific students, 
moreover, are carefully trained in the writing of essays in 
tlieir regular course, and, as will be seen further on, in the 
student associations. 

Along this line of technical education the school is a 
success, its numbers increase year by year, the standard of 
admission is steadily rising, and by the addition of new de- 
partments it is Avidening the sphere of its influence and use- 
fulness. Tliere are some who see in such rapid develop- 
ment of professional schools parallel with the college course 
a menace to the influence and prestige of liberal education. 
Such anxiety is not well founded. When universities first 
sprang into existence, it was by establishing different facul- 
ties in different places. That plan survived until a recent 
date in France, and has, from the necessity of the case, been 
extensively followed here. Central and southern Europe, 
on the other hand, gathered all the faculties as far as pos- 
sible to common centres, into close propinquity and relation 
to each other. The result is obvious in the history of 
education. The collective intellectual labor of men who all 
live by their brains creates community of interest and 
strength of movement. Mutual appreciation takes the 
place of mutual distrust among students and professors of 
various subjects. The narrowness of the humanities offsets 



130 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

the narrowness of science and the practical rigidity of the 
useful arts. Most men bred in universities have learned 
more from their association with fellow-students than from 
their teachers. In every line of investigation and mental 
drill there are educational value and liberal training, much 
more in some than in others, but much in all. Large bodies 
of men who do such work interact wholesomely on each 
other when brought into daily contact by vicinage. If the 
humanities are weakened or profaned in such association, 
or the pursuit of science and knowledge for its own salce is 
endangered, then the boasted self-effacement of their votaries 
and the vaunted strength of ideals ought to be shown up 
as unfit in the struggle for existence. But such is not the 
fact. On the contrary, they nowhere shine with such 
brightness, nor work with such success in leavening the 
whole lump of etlucated men. 

But these truisms receive special emphasis in Princeton 
by the fact that all the students of whatever stripe are eli- 
gible to membership in the great literary societies, or " halls," 
as the college parlance shapes its phrase from their respec- 
tive buildings. These associations are now absolutely unique, 
as the older colleges which once had similar literary socie- 
ties have, with a few exceptions, now lost tiiem. Tlie two 
Princeton halls were founded respectively one by James 
Madison and associates, the other by Robert Ogden, Will- 
iam Paterson, Luther Martin, Oliver Ellsworth, and Tap- 
ping Reeve. Of these six men, three were afterwards fram- 
ers of the Constitution, one was Chief-Justice of Connecti- 
cut, one was Attorney-General of the United States, one 
was Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and 
one was President. There is no need to describe the char- 
acter of these associations thus founded, nor the impress 



nuycETON I -yi i ■h'/tsir v 



131 



their founders put upon tlieiu. Tliiit chai-actei" lias persist- 
ed to the present day, although the quaint tirst names of 
Plain - dealing and Well-meaning have been changed to 
American Whig and Cliosophic. 

They have handsome and solid buildings, as near alike as 
possible, so that their keen rivalry may be purely literary. 
Tiieir management is absolutely without interference by 
the faculty, except as graduate members in that body have 




SKMINARY Iiril.mXG 



the same privileges as others. The nights on which they 
meet have a place in the student's calendar as ''hall night." 
In a high degree they conduce to the political and literary 
training of their members, as the rivalry for their honors is 
intense, and the large membership — about 400 in one, and 
450 in the other — both insures a dignified critical audience, 
and gives field enough for selection to guarantee high abil- 
ities and a thorough training in those who rise to the top. 



132 FOUR AMEMICAN UNIVERSITIES 

Their public contests are in oratory, debate, and composi- 
tion. Since ISTB, of the 42 first honors, 19 have gone to 
one and 23 to the other. It is an open secret that they are 
modelled as closely as may be on the House of Representa- 
tives, with a view to training their members for public life 
and making them familiar with parliamentary custom. 

These few words will indicate the high value of such aux- 
iliaries. They afford that distinction which noble youth so 
earnestly covets not only in the palaestra, but in the forum 
and the porch. The largeness of their interests trains men 
to leadership without reference to the pettiness or grandeur 
of enterprises. They more than double the regular training 
of the university in politics, history, and literature. They 
form a charming social centre, democratic and American in 
the numbers which have access to the hearth-stone. They 
secure the somewhat inconsiderate and rude but invaluable 
training of youth by youth under restraints which prevent 
its degradation into brutality. They give every man that 
fair chance among his equals which restrains effrontery while 
it cures bashfulness and develops efficiency. Tlieir enthusi- 
asm is as great to-day as it was in the last century, and they 
are better equipped than ever for their work. 

Since the great movement was inaugurated which estab- 
lished athletics as a permanent element in school and uni- 
vei'sity life, Princeton has not been without glory in out- 
door sport. She has from the outset been a doughty oppo- 
nent to both Yale and Harvard, and in those games which 
she plays has had her due mead of victory in intercollegiate 
contests. Iler success has certainly been great in propor- 
tion to her numbers. This is not a matter of slight signifi- 
cance nor of college advertisement, and at the risk of 
running counter to public prejudice, I venture a few words 



rmyvEroN univehhity 135 

of serious coinment on a theme of the highest importance. 
The subject should be viewed from several aspects. The 
first one is trite enough, that as patriots and educators col- 
lege managers are bound to provide physical education as 
well as moral and mental. This is admitted on all liands ; 
the question is how to reach the result. Some would have 
military drill, discipline, and uniforms, with an instructor 
from the officers of the regular army, as provided gratis by 
the general government. Others would take the dimensions 
of every limb, calculate the proportions of the body, auscul- 
tate for every defect in lungs and heart, and then, under med- 
ical supervision, provide the apparatus needed to expand the 
chest, or draw down a shoulder, or decrease the waist, and 
send the young Apollo with his perfect proportions and 
graceful walk on his journey through the world. A third 
method is to provide a free gymnasium, also with a compe- 
tent instructor, leaving its use in preparation for sports of 
various sorts to the option of those who engage in them, or 
wish to, and provide a stimulus for the largest possible num- 
ber to use it by the development of the glorious and ex- 
hilarating out-door games — base-ball, foot-ball, lacrosse, and 
rowing — in the management of the students themselves. 

It is clear that the first of these propositions would add a 
new study to the student's already overburdened course, 
and emphasize unduly the military conception of life in our 
civil institutions. The second must go down under the 
simple consideration that it makes work out of play, and 
like the former destro^^s all spontaneity and initiative on 
the part of the student. If military drill and gymnastic 
exercises are really a portion of a liberal education, make 
them so openly, incorporate them in your scheme, but still 
leave time for recreation. The third one, therefore, is the 



136 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

correct conception. "We firmly believe in the value of phj'si- 
cal training, but athletics is quite another thing, for it in- 
cludes the moral element in the conduct of sport, which is sec- 
ond to no other. A great Frenchman, distressed by the dull 
and heavy temper of the Lyceen and the gloom of bis life, 
has recently supported the powerful and successful move- 
ment inaugurated in his native land for the introduction of 
American and English games. He wishes to bring with ' 
them the joyousness, the robust vigor, and the initiative of 
English and American boy life. We may not give our 
young men liberty in their studies, he argues — we know 
how that leads to sciolism; nor yet in their morals — bitter 
experience precludes that ; where, then, shall they have 
freedom? In their sports. I do not quote, but give as 
correctly as possible from memory what I read some time 
ago. 

This has been in substance the Princeton practice and 
system from the beginning. The time of college years is 
too precious to be devoted to the work of mere physical 
training. Yet recreation is essential. When \'oung men, 
therefore, play from the love of it, they get both. And as 
intercollegiate sports were managed for many years, they 
get far more — namely, the experience of large enterprises ; 
the character of generous submission to defeat, with perse- 
verance to begin all over and try again ; and self-restraint, 
with courtesy to the weaker, in victory. This was so when 
out-door sports were conducted for the sake of sport, as 
they once were, and will be again when the true bearings 
of harmonious co-operation and pluck upon winning shall be 
rediscovered. It is certain that in the intense rivalry of 
such contests victory will go only where fine traditions are 
guarded, and where the right spirit is perpetuated by the 




s>»^ 






miXCKTON UNIVERSITY 139 

active intei'est of eveiy man according to liis powers. Tliere 
can be nothing vicarious in athletics ; neither tlic power of 
money, nor the influence of social rank, nor the supervision 
of committees can replace tiie unity of movement which 
combines a whole society into one uplifting, forceful effort 
at the crisis. 

Any in-door recreation or exercise, while it has its place, 
is, after all, a poor shift for out-door sport. It is a serious 
truth that other nations wonder at the proud position of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, and that they attribute the fine ripe 
qualities of maturer life to the beginnings born on playing- 
fields and developed in the seriousness of conflict. These 
mimic battle-fields demand the same qualities as real ones, 
and no great game is won without the moral support of the 
non-combatants. Union, organization, enthusiasm, pluck, 
high principle — every one of them is as much the price of 
athletic as of martial victory. It is humiliating, when we 
have the precious possession of taste and power in such a 
matter, to find it belittled and discouraged in so many ways. 
Instead of being grateful for the Spartan element in the 
training of its youth, America is either ignorant of its value 
or opposed to its exercise entirely. 

The social side of Princeton life differs by the whole 
heavens from that of any other university on our side of 
the water. It is a strange coml)ination of town and coun- 
try which produces this effect. It is nearer to the great 
cities than any college which is not in and of them. A run 
of an hour and a half in an express train brings it to them 
and them to it. Yet that is sufficient distance to secure 
entire isolation from the influence of the counting-house 
and the " street,'' or from the attractions of the drama or 
the whirl of winter gayetJ^ The morning paper from New 



140 FOUB AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

York or Philadelphia is on the breakfast-table, but Vanity 
Fair is behind the lenses and screens of the diorama. Most 
of the time, thei'efore, Princeton is left to its own resources, 
but in the intervals it has the stimulus from without which 
gives a strong enough fillip to 7uake the blood course freely. 
Tlie town itself, moreover, lias but one interest. There are 
no manufactures, no courts, no fairs. With the exception 
of a few gentle families of independent means, who either 
belong to the old gentry of the State or find the village a 
pleasant place of retirement, the inhabitants consist of the 
professors or other attaches of the college and seminary 
with their families, and of those who in some direct or in- 
direct way provide for their necessities. 

It is evident that such a social organism must have very 
exceptional traits. The steady habits, plain living, and ab- 
sorbing duties of professors all tend to retirement and 
isolation. The occupants of the various chairs, moreover, 
are brought from wherever they may be found, and if fitted 
for their position they have that sturdy individuality which 
does not easily blend into homogeneity or bow to tradi- 
tional habits. The association of families like these, there- 
fore, might be expected to show something of conscious 
effort and restraint. But, except for a trifle of old-fashioned 
formality, the new-comer is not aware of any eccentricity, 
because the limitations of small number prevent the forma- 
tion of cliques, and constant companionship soon produces 
ease and a quiet toleration of individuality in otliers. There 
is plenty of entertaining — teas, receptions, suppers, and quiet 
dinners, simple and unostentatious, but warm with hospi- 
tality and genial enjoyment. For the men there is a social 
club, the " Nassau," which at intervals, like other simihir 
country associations, opens its doors to women also. The 



PRIXCETON UNlVEliSITY 141 

constituent elements in such society never quite combine in 
ciiemicul union to the extent of personal obliteration, but 
their very persistence has the charm of the unforeseen. 
And to tiiis is added greater variety by the constant visits 
of strangers from at home or abroad, drawn by the pres- 
ence of some friend in the college, or by curiosity and the 
ease of approach. Princeton society lies away from the 
hurly-burly of the great world, but it is on that account 
neither uninteresting nor fossilized. Free from affectations, 
its danger is. in self-complacency rather than in env\'. 

There exist in Princeton several learned societies, with a 
total membership of about eighty. They average twenty 
members, though they are not of equal size. They are com- 
posed exclusivel}' of professors, fellows, and graduates, and 
are styled the Science, Philosophy, and Literary clubs re- 
spectively ; and the first has now thrown off two sections — 
mathematical and biological. The sphere of each is kept 
so large that they enclose all the intellectual activity of the 
university. Each meets once a month, and divides its 
meetings into two classes — those for original papers, and 
those for the reports of what the world is doing in its line. 
The proportion of the former to the latter is as two to one 
approximately. These societies are the most potent influ- 
ence in stimulating to research, and the creative activity of 
their members is largely enforced by the necessity of keep- 
ing step in a progressive body. Many of the original con- 
tributions are printed either in learned journals or in the 
BuUettn — a quarterly appearing during term-time, and de- 
voted to the interests of the trustees and faculty. It is not 
uncommon either for the papers thus offered to be again 
read in what is known as the library meeting. The Presi- 
dent's mansion is very large, and at intervals he throws 



142 FOUM AMERICAN UNIVERtilTIES 

open his libraiy and the adjoining rooms to the upper class 
men — Juniors, Seniors, and graduates. An essay by a pro- 
fessor, fellow, or some invited guest is read. Then follows 
a discussion, introduced by some one versed in the subject 
of the paper, and afterwards thrown open to all present. 
Such meetings have been very frequent for twenty - one 
years, and are prized by the aristocracy of scholars among 
Princeton students as the most invaluable opportunities of 
their university life. The attendance is as higii as a hun- 
dred and fifty, and the session often lasts two hours and a 
half with unflagging interest. Stiffness and coldness are 
banished from both the club and library meetings by the 
fact that they are not ordinarily held in public rooms, but 
in the inviting privacy of a friendly home, under the shade 
of an hospitable roof-tree. 

The assurance of any one not a student in aspiring to 
delineate even the salient features of student life is simply 
incalculable. If it be true — as, alas, it is true — that one- 
half of the world ignores the doings of the other, and if 
even parents in the intimacy of domestic life meet with 
such surprises in the lives of their children, what shall be 
said of the privacy with which the student cloaks himself 
before all except his fellows? And yet there are some 
matters of interest which cannot be hidden. Princeton 
students come, as was noted in another connection and ac- 
coi'ding to the last catalogue, from some forty -two States and 
eleven foreign lands. AVhile New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania furnish the largest quotas, yet there are so 
many and different towns, cities, and rural districts rejire- 
sented that no social class or local influence or professional 
clique can determine standards of living and thinking. 
Then, too, there are no Greek-letter fraternities to gather 




'?ul\// A 




PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 145 

ill and crystallize social sets, although, of course, where men 
congregate like will more or less foregather and collogue 
with like. So it happens that there is a constant flux, ar- 
rangement, and rearrangement of associates. The poor are 
not debarred by the costly machinery of life from meeting 
the richer, nor these by the existence of self-consciousness 
from the invaluable intimacy with tlie self-supporting. In 
fact, the whole scale of expenditure is comparativel}' low, 
necessary expenses running from three to seven hundred 
dollars a year, and this begets social equality. The friends 
of Freshman year are, moreover, not necessarilj' those of 
Senior year; in general experience, quite the reverse is the 
case. 

The community of social life depends on what ma}^ be 
called the home life of the students' chambers, and on the 
intercourse at table in the various boarding-houses scattered 
throughout the town. This latter matter is one of very 
serious import. Some influential man gathers together a 
number (ten or upwards) of his acquaintance, and secures 
board for them where accommodation is to be had. He is 
in a measure responsible for the character of the food and 
cooking, and intermediates between the Boniface and his 
guests. In return for these services he has his own seat at 
table without charge. This is, of course, one of the best- 
known ways of supplementing slender means. The scale of 
charses differs accordins: to circumstances, and furnishes 
food at various prices to suit every purse. A generous friend 
once provided a spacious hall, with all the appurtenances of 
an excellent restaurant, large enough to seat two-thirds of 
the young men, and for a year or so furnished excellent 
food at a reasonable price. But his customers (!) finally fell 
away. For some it was too dear, for some too cheap, and 

10 



146 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

for all too public. It was one of the sights to visit the 
•' commons " at dinner-time, and the diners would have none 
of it. The old institution of eating-houses or clubs, with 
their uninspected dietary and precious privacy for talk and 
joke and debate, has long since reasserted itself. It seems 
to have been largely the social element which reinstated 
them, and it is certainly that element which sustains them. 
Princeton college rooms are, on the whole, very commo- 
dious and reasonable in price. There are far from enough 
of them, and, as a consequence, they are in great demand. 
The athletics of spring and autumn keep nearly all but the 
most diligent out-of-doors in recreation-time. In addition 
to the '' University " and " Brokaw," two fine large athletic 
fields, with club-houses, dressing-rooms, and every variety 
of baths, there are several other grounds available for base- 
ball, foot-ball, lacrosse, and tennis. In those seasons and 
at the proper hours every vista shows groups of students 
clad in flannels and absorbed in games. Boating has un- 
fortunately fallen out of the list of Princeton sports, al- 
though there is an admirable boat-house nearer to the 
centre of life than at either Yale or Harvard, and the 
Delaware and Raritan Canal affords better facilities for 
rowing than either the Isis or the Cam. But in the long 
evenings of the winter term the undergraduates' cham- 
bers are his delight. Adorned with every trophy and 
souvenir dear to the heart of youth, many of them are 
most attractive. And when the logs — real logs still in 
Princeton — are heaped on the hearth in the early, and 
sometimes the late evening too, song and joke mingle with 
the tinkle of the guitar and mandolin, or often the louder 
tones of the piano and the cornet break through the cur- 
tained windows and float vaguely to the passers' eai-s. 









^•^ 



rmXCETON UNIVERSITY 149 

Student associations arc very numerous. There arc, of 
course, the various boards of athletic management and the 
gymnastic associations, but there are besides the glee club, 
the banjo club, the dramatic association, the chess club, the 
hare-and-hounds club, the kennel club, the gun club, and more 
of the same class. Then there are always a number of de- 
bating clubs for private practice, and of late there have 
been very enthusiastic Shakespeare, Browning, and other 
literary associations. They all have their active supporters, 
and keep up a vigorous interest and vitality. In addition 
there are five social organizations with an average member- 
ship (confined to upper-class men) of about twenty, that rise 
to the dignity of houses in which there are dining-rooms, 
reading-rooms, bedrooms for graduates, and all the various 
paraphernalia of a club. If the Princeton man is largely 
thrown for society upon himself and his fellows by the ab- 
normal conditions of a small town, he is amply able to meet 
the emergency. 

Yet the social intercourse of many with the families of 
their instructors and governors is very constant — as con- 
stant, in fact, as they care to make it, for they are very wel- 
come with their budgets of news and the latest joke and 
their bubbling spirits. But, on the whole, it must be con- 
fessed they prefer their own kind, and ^Vheu there is to be a 
great social event, as at Commencement or at intervals dur- 
ing the winter, the undergraduates like to organize and man- 
age it themselves, and have their friends from home share 
their pleasures. Youth is not slow to express opinions or 
give utterance to the passing impression. Those of old 
Nassau are no exception ; they demand all sorts of things 
through the medium of their press, which is, however, con- 
ducted with admirable gravity and self - repression. They 

10* 



150 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

want lectures and music and entertainment ; but when the 
lectures and the like come, it must be confessed that they are 
not very much run after, or even very well supported. They 
frankly censui'e what they consider censurable in their daily 
paper, they crack their jokes in an illustrated comic weekly, 
and in their excellent monthly magazine they discuss all sorts 
of things without restraint, but with force and good-nature. 

SI Vesprit sei't d tout, il ne sujjit a rieii. No account of 
Princeton, or of any other seat of learning for that matter, 
would be complete without mention of her attitude to re- 
ligion. The oldest and largest serainai'y of the Presbyterian 
Church is situated in Princeton. For years its theology and 
the name of the town have been associated in the public 
mind, and they have been so compounded into one word that 
the parts may never be separated. Logically enough, how- 
ever, when you consider, the college proper has alwa3's been 
unsectarian, containing nothing whatsoever in its charter to 
compel the election of its officers from any denomination or 
profession. It has always taught the Bible as a part of its 
course, and continues to do so. There is instruction by the 
President in the Evidences of Christianity, and a chair of the 
Harmony of Science and Religion. There are daily chapel 
services, where alone is seen impressively the unity of the 
university. These have been conducted for the most part 
by clergymen, but are often enough in charge of officiating 
laymen. There is an old and distinguished religious society, 
the Philadelphian, ever characterized by piety and mission- 
ary ardor. There is throughout the institution an active, 
intense, spontaneous religious life. But, like all wholesome 
activities, it all comes from personal impulse and convic- 
tion. The university exists for the sake of sound learning. 
The instruction given in the philosophical and historical de- 






-■* ^r^ 










J • ""^ — -^ I S" • 'I" 



:»im 



1 ^%;bT.~- 



r 




-V 






<^ 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 153 

partraents shuns no difficult questions because of tlieir rela- 
tion to faith. But it has no conscious aim to turn out men 
machine-made in their conscience and convictions. Men of 
all sects, including Koman Catholics and Jews, are heartil}^ 
welcomed. Tliey can and do avail themselves of its advan- 
tages without an}' sense of illiberal treatment, or of narrow- 
ness and bigotry in the spirit of the place. 

After all that is said in tiie fashionable philosophy of our 
day about organisms and organic life, society is formed by 
individuals, and resolves itself into individuals. When, 
therefore, we weigh a state, or a family, or any other pha- 
lanstery of men, our first inquiry is, where and what is the 
individual — the race can take care of itself. In this series 
every writer holds a brief for the university which is his 
theme. He must be pardoned for blindness to fault and 
kindness to virtue. It is notorious that the loyalty of Prince- 
tonians often rises into rapture, and so, to be outdone by 
no other, I must close with an effort to sketch the Prince- 
tonian as it is hoped that others see him, and so throw in 
his weaknesses first and in shadow. 

Thomas Jefferson \vas a man very careless in dress, and 
without even an affectation of that strange but desirable 
thing we call style, as Mr. Adams, the latest and best his- 
torian of his first administration, testifies. Evidence, how- 
ever, is adduced to show that he was in this respect like 
the class of Virginia gentlemen to whom he belonged. 
Something of that old influence still lingers in the uni- 
versity where so many of them \vere educated, and there is 
a lounging easiness of garb and manner in the student at 
work in Princeton which many woukl gladl}' see at the van- 
ishing-point. Athletics have introcluced motley costumes, 
from the head-gear to the shoes, and these too often appear 



154 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

where they have no relation Avhatever to the matters in 
hand at the time. Born perhaps of the same parentage, but 
incidental to young manhood, is a certain wilfulness, or 
rather proneness, to accept very little on authority. In for- 
mer days there was an old-fashioned attitude of defiance 
towards the faculty which came of separation and misunder- 
standing. This began to disappear when the college weekly 
was transformed from a critical journal into a daily news- 
paper. For a time also there existed a formal conference- 
committee, composed of professors and students ; this com- 
pleted the process of I'econciliation, and, having done its 
work, no longer exists. The students, for example, take 
entire charge of the honor question in examinations. The 
case of any one suspected of dishonesty is investigated by 
them, and the culprit, if he prove to be one, is reported by 
them to the faculty for expulsion. It is but occasionally 
that any ill-considered or headstrong opposition to consti- 
tuted authority is shown. There is alwa^-s the crumpled 
rose-leaf, and where wellnigh the whole undergraduate life 
is independent, having its initiative within itself, whether 
as to choice in work, or in the literary societies, or in the 
management of gymnastics, sports, and intercollegiate con- 
tests, it is not unnatural that something of the same force 
should go over into departments where the youth is still in 
tutelage and under the strong hand of control. 

On the other liand, the absolute equality and democracy 
produced by the meeting of all sorts and conditions of men 
from everywhere compel the wiping off of old prejudice 
and predisposition. Nothing is so pre-eminently charac- 
teristic of Princeton student life as this. The univer- 
sity puts its stamp indelibly on the renewed surface ; the 
Princetonian is ever amenable to just discipline, and sub- 



PUINGETON UNIVEltmTY 155 

iiiits with grace to regulations which must be stringent 
where the exercise of the civil power is largely in the hands 
of men dependent for a livelihood on the good -will and 
patronage of tiic students, in a community where, therefore, 
the highest exhibition of law and its majesty is in the fiat 
of the university administration. Such a combination of 
needful obedience and equally needful command in young 
men produces strong character, and in the great centres and 
among the learned professions Princetonians hold their own, 
with a body of experience behind them as valuable in real 
life as it was in the schools. The Princetonian is perhaps 
bluff, but he is also tender ; he sees straight and behaves 
promptly, but not ruthlessly ; he marks down a sham quick- 
ly, and is not given to toadying ; he has reverence for much 
in tliis world and the next, and is not given to theoretical 
"isms," honestly respecting things which have their roots 
in the experience of the ])ast and in the institutions of his 
country, himself among the number. 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



^-. 





IV 



^^i^®IIE amazing development of the commerce and 
inunufactures of New York is patent to all of 
us ; we cannot help seeing it ; but most of us 
have found it easy to overlook the development 
of the intellectual life of the city, which is equally amazing. 
Sixty j'ears ago the literary centre of the United States 
was probably in Philadelphia; thirty years ago it was cer- 
tainly in Boston ; to-day, few could deny that it is in New 
York, when it is remembered that four out of every five of 
the great monthly magazines and weekly journals are is- 
sued from this city, and that a very large proportion of the 
American men of letters of today live in or near the me- 
tropolis. And here, on Manhattan Island, are congregated 
also the most of the prominent artists of America — paint- 
ers, sculptors, decorators, and architects. 

New York is so used to its commercial supremac}' of 
America that we New-Yorkers forget that this primacy of 
New York is the growth of a century only. In 1790 the 
population of New York was 33,131, while that of Boston 
was 18,038, and of Philadelphia, 28,522. " So late as 17<;9," 
said Mr. Seth Low, in one of the addresses he made when 
he was installed as President of Columbia College, "it was 
considered a rash prediction that New York might one day 
equal Newport, Ehode Island, as a commercial city " ; and 



160 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

President Low took pride in pointing out that it was to a 
son of Columbia, De AVitt Clinton, that we owe the Erie 
Canal and the ensuing mercantile supremacy of this city. 

A development as remarkable as that which has taken 
place in the commerce of New York within the past hun- 
dred years, or as that which has taken place in the intellect- 
ual life of New York within the jmst fifty years, has taken 
place in Columbia College within the past twenty - five 
years. From what was a little college of the narrow in- 
land type only a score or so of years ago, Columbia has 
grown into a large university worthy of a mighty city. 
This growth has been so gradual that many even of the 
graduates of the college fail entirely to appreciate the fact 
or to grasp its significance. So it is that those of us who 
have followed the expansion of our aJma mater are never 
surprised when we hear Columbia treated now as a small 
college and then as a great university. We are not sur- 
prised because we recognize that both of these descriptions 
are fairly accurate. Columbia is at once a small college 
and a great university. 

To explain this ])aradox, one needs only to draw attention 
to the exact meaning now attached to the words college 
and university, formerly treated as tliough they were al- 
most synonymous, and even to-day often carelessly con- 
founded. In a sentence or two it is not easy to make clear 
that distinction between these words which is now gainins: 
acceptance in America, and which is quite different from 
that obtaining in England, where a college is a component 
part of a university (much as New Yorlv is one of the 
United States); but the attempt must be made. What the 
American college is we all know ; it is an institution aim- 
ing tp give its students, in a four years' course, what is called 




BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Loukiiig Nurtli rroiii Furt;'-nintb Street, 



COLUMBIA VNIVERSITY 



161 



a liberal education. What an American university ought 
to be we are beginning to perceive ; it is an institution aim- 
ing to guide its students in advanced work and to train 
tiiem in investigation. It is the duty of the college to give 
breadth; it is the duty of the university to give depth. 
The students who apply to a university for further instruc- 




PRESIDENT SETH LOW 



tion are supposed already to have a liberal education ; in 
other words, the university begins where the college leaves 
off. The college should send forth men of culture ; the uni- 
versity should take some of these men and carry their edu- 
cation further and make each of them master of a specialty. 
11 



162 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

Perhaps concrete examples will best emphasize the tlis- 
tinction : for instance, Amherst is a fine specimen of the 
American college of to-day, while Johns Hopkins, although 
not yet at its full development, suggests the type of the 
American university of to-morrow. 

" If I am right," said Mr. Seth Low, in his presidential 
address at a recent convention of the College Association of 
the i\Iiddle States, " the difference between a college and a 
university is to a great extent a difference in aim." Accept- 
ing this view, it is obvious that only evil can result from any 
confusion of purpose ^ from the attempt, for example, to 
crowd university work into a college curriculum. But 
there is no reason why the university and the college should 
not form parts of the same institution, each keeping strictly 
to its own aims, and each aiding the otlier. This is the state 
of affairs at Columbia ; the college and the university exist 
side by side, and yet perfectly distinct. The college is a 
small college ; if we reckon by the number of its undergrad- 
uates, it is no larger than Amherst. The university is a 
great university ; if we reckon by the number of its stu- 
dents, there are now only three larger in the United States, 
— Harvard, Yale, and the Universitj^ of Michigan. 

Founded more than a century after Harvard, a little more 
than lialf a century after Yale, and only eight years after 
Princeton, King's College began to give instruction in 1754, 
under a charter which placed among the first governors 
ministers not only of the Church of England, but also of 
the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, the Dutch Eeformed, and 
the French Protestant churches, and which provided that 
these governors should make no laws " to exclude any Per- 
son of any religious Denomination whatever from equal 
Liberty and Advantages, or from any of the Degrees, Lib- 



COLUMBIA. UNIVERSITT 



163 



ei'ties, Privileges, Benefits, or Inuminities of the said Col- 
lege, on Account of bis particular Tenets in Jlatters of 
Religion. " 

The first class of eight students was taught in the ves- 
try-room of the school-house attached to Trinity Church ; 
and in the year after the college opened the church granted 
to it a piece of ground " in the skirts of the city." On this 
land, bounded by Church, Barclay, and Murray Streets, the 
governors erected, in 1750, a building thirty feet wide by 
one hundred and eighty' long; and in this building — the 
situation of which is now commemorated by the street 
called College Place — the college remained for a century. 

Here Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Gouver- 
neur Morris laid the foundations of their knowledge. Here 
the college was revived after the Eevolution^King's Col- 
lege no longer, but Columbia — the first use of the name 
of Columbus in connection with any of the institutions of 
the continent he had discovered. Here the new Columbia 




KING S COLLKGE — Krfiln au Old Priut 



164 FUUB AMERICAN VSIYERSITIES 

College graduated De Witt Clinton and Hamilton Fish, who 
worthily continued the tradition of Hamilton and Jay. 
Here the college saw the city — which had had only ten 
thousand inhabitants when the first class of freshmen met — 
grow steadily and sturdily until its population had increased 
fifty-fold in the space of a century. 

Then, in 1857, a hundred and three years after its foun- 
dation, Columbia College transplanted itself to the corner 
of Madison Avenue and -lOth Street, a situation at that 
time as obviously "in tlie skirts of the city" as the orig- 
inal grounds had been when the college first took posses- 
sion of them. Although this was never intended to be 
more than a temporary resting - place, pending the selec- 
tion of a permanent site, the college will have remained 
tiiere nearly forty years. There Charles Anthon concluded 
his useful career ; there Henry Drisler brought to an end 
fifty years of honorable service ; there President Barnard 
broadened the instruction, and enriched the courses, and 
made ready for the expansion of the college into a univer- 
sity, which took place there after he had been succeeded 
by Mr. Low. 

Buildings were erected one after another as necessity 
demanded, among them a nol)ly planned library and a 
group of lecture-rooms called Hamilton Hall, in honor of 
the most distinguished of Columbia's sons. At last there 
was no room for any more buildings, and still the college 
was crowded and cramped and uncomfortable. Again the 
city had grown up and surrounded the college, and again 
came the irresistible demand for removal. While the col- 
lege itself had increased the number of its scholars, it had 
slowly surrounded itself with technical schools more than 
one of which had in attendance on its courses more stu- 



COLVMIilA VXIVEIISITY 



165 



dents tlian tlie college itself. Tiie problem tliat faced Mr. 
how when he assumed the presidency, in ISOO, was two- 
fold ; it was at once internal and external ; it was first to 
develop the organization so as to show the exact condition 
of the college and its relation to the elements of a univer- 
sity which were in existence on all sides of if ; and, sec- 
ondly, to find a piece of land somewhere " in the skirts 




COLUMBIA COLLEGE {1S50) 



of the city " to which Columbia might remove linally, and 
on which it might expand freely and indefinitely. 

Of the technical schools which had slowly clustered about 
Columbia, the earliest was the School of Medicine. In 1767 
Columbia, then King's College, established the first medical 
faculty in Xew York and the second in the colonies. In 
1814 the professors were allowed to resign in order to be- 
come the faculty of the independent College of Physicians 
11* 




166 FOUR AMEMWAN UNIVERSITIES 

and Surgeons founded some seven 
years before. In 1860, by joint 
resolution of its trustees and those 
of Columbia, this College of Phy- 
sicians and Surgeons became the 
medical department of Columbia, 
coppKK CROWN ON CUPOLA but for thirty years the connection 
between the two was little more 
tlian an alliance. In 1891 this alliance was turned into a 
union, the College of Physicians and Surgeons (which had 
been a proprietary medical school) surrendering its indepen- 
dence and becoming an integral part of Columbia. Thus 
Columbia acquired not only lands, buildings, and funds val- 
ued at one and three-quarter millions of dollars, but it gained 
also a medical department of the highest reputation, fidly 
manned, and fully equipped. High as has been the reputa- 
tion of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the past, 
it is likely to be yet higher in the future, for the consolida- 
tion with Columbia has enabled the trustees to increase the 
requirements, both for admission and for graduation, thus 
raising the standard of medical education, without regard 
to the probable decrease in the number of students which 
such a course might entail temporarily, and without regard 
to the consequent decrease in the fees which had hitherto 
been the sole support of the school. It is the opinion of 
many of those best able to judge that in the history of med- 
ical education in America there is no more important step 
than this taking over by Columbia of the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons. 

The second of the technical schools to come into exist- 
ence was the School of Law. As far back as 1798 the col- 
lege had a professorship of law, the professor being James 



J^>\- 'iSSL 



■a 




W^'^.f 



^■-t!;-,: IH-h ■«■ |i-'l'»b!l >-; ■-■■ 



fl>.!l!*; 




HAMILTON HALL 



Kent ; and Columbia proudly recalls the fact tbat it was to 
her students tbat Chancellor Kent first delivered bis famous 
Commentaries on American Law, originally published in 
lS2fi. But it was not until 1858 that the School of Law was 
formally organized, with the late Theodore W. Dwight as 
its warden. As a teacher of law, as an expounder of princi- 
ples, Dr. Dwight had no rival in our time ; bis lucidity was 
marvellous. Under bis management the Columbia Law 
School soon became one of the foremost in the country. At 
first he was almost the only lecturer, but one by one other 
chairs were created. Dr. Dwight resigned the wardenship 
two vears before his death in 1892 ; and methods of instruc- 



168 FOUH AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

tioii have since been adopted which are not dependent, as his 
were, upon his own extraordinary gift of exposition. The 
course of instruction has been lengthened and strengthened 
year by year, and the staff of instructors has been increased, 
while the students have also the privilege of attending the 
lectures on public law, on Eoraan law, and on constitutional 
history given by the professors of the School of Political 
Science. 

In 18(34-, six years after the beginning of the School of 
Law, Columbia founded a School of Mines, which pi'oved its 
usefulness at the very first, and which soon attained to a 
foremost position among the technological institutes of 
America. By degrees it has widened its scope, until it has 
courses not only in mining engineering, but also in civil, 
mechanical, electrical, and sanitary engineering. It is, in 
fact, a school of applied science in a vevy wide sense of the 
term. More than that, it is also a school of architecture, 
having at the head of this department Mr. "William E. Ware. 
Perhaps the School of Mines, narrow as its name is, offers 
as much instruction in applied science and in architecture 
as any institute of technology in America. 

Sixteen years after the School of Mines was started Co- 
lumbia established its fourth professional school, and the 
first one which was not intended to prepare men simply for 
the practice of a profession. The School of Political Sci- 
ence, founded in 1880, was modelled upon the Ecole Libre 
des Sciences Politiques of Paris. It was the first institution 
of the kind to be opened in any English-speaking country. 
Its purpose is " to give students a complete general view of 
all the subjects of public polity, both internal and external, 
from the threefold point of view of historj', law, and phi- 
losophy." It has courses in history' — political, economic, 




A BIT OF THE OLD A.ND THE NEW 



COLUMBIA UmVEHSITY \1\ 

legal, constitutional, and diplomatic — in political philosopii}', 
in international, constitutional, and adniinistrative law, in 
comparative jurisprudence, in political economy, finance, 
and social science. From the beginning the School of Po- 
litical Science has maintained a higii standard, admitting no 
student who has not completed a college course to the end 
of the junior year. It has been very chary of its degrees ; it 
has had more than one thousand students, and it has grant- 
ed the degree of Ph.D. to less than twoscore of them. Its 
faculty edits the Political Science Quarterhj, one of the most 
authoritative journals of its class, having a high reputation 
both in this country and in Europe. The School of Polit- 
ical Science is in part a symptom and in part a cause of 
that revival of interest in political speculation here in 
America which Mr. Eryce has declared to be one of the 
most remarkable of recent developments. 

When Mr. Seth Low was called to the presidency of 
Columbia in 1S90 this was the condition in which he 
found it. The college itself had grown but little in the pi'e- 
ceding half century, and yet around the college four flour- 
ishing professional schools had grouped themselves. Al- 
though three of these were governed by the trustees of the 
college, each maintained its own independence, and made 
little or no effort towards co-ordination and co-operation. 
Within three years after Mr. Low's accession these hetero- 
geneous bodies were brought into harmony, the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons becoming in fact as well as in 
name the Medical School of Columbia. 

Already in 1800 certain of the professors of the college 
had begun to give courses intended primarily for graduate 
students. From this nucleus was evolved, partly by the 
establishment of new chairs and partly by re-assignment 



172 FOUR AMERICAN VXIVERSITIES 

of existing professorships, the School of Philosophy, which 
conducts the advanced courses in philosophy", philology, and 
letters. To this faculty are committed English, both lan- 
guage and literature, Greek and Latin, French and German, 
Italian and Spanish, Sanskrit and Avestan, Hebrew and 
Assyrian ; to it the courses in philosoph}', in psychology, in 
ethics, and in the history and principles of education are also 
intrusted. 

In like manner a School of Pure Science was formed by 
the creation of a department of biology with four instructors 
and by the transfer from the School of Mines of the chairs 
of botany and astronomy. The professors of geology, math- 
ematics, chemistry, physics, and physiology have also seats 
in this faculty. (Indeed, it is not at all uncommon for a 
Columbia professor to sit in two faculties, whenever his 
subject is one which is difficult to assign precisely to either, 
or which really belongs to both.) In the departments of bi- 
ology and physiology" unusual advantages are offered to ad- 
vanced students, for whose use tables are especially sub- 
scribed for in the marine station at Wood's II oil. 

Of these six schools which thus clustered about Colum- 
bia three were primarily technical, intended to train men 
to practise as physicians and lawyers, as engineers and ar- 
chitects ; and yet even these professional schools felt the 
broadening influence of their close association with an in- 
stitution intended to give a liberal education. The other 
three schools — that of Political Science, that of Philosophy, 
and that of Pure Science — were not technical schools at 
all; they were really university faculties offering advanced 
courses chiefly to post-graduate students. Taken altogethei*, 
these three schools may be called the Columbia equivalent 
of what at Harvard is termed the Graduate School. In 




STAIRWAY LEADING TO LIBRARY 



COLUMDIA VXIVERSITY 175 

lS9-t-.95 they annoiinced nearly 500 courses intended for 
graduates — more than 30 in classical pliilology, 20 in ro- 
mance philology, 30 in philosophy and cilucation, more than 
20 in Oriental languages, 30 in English, 30 in history and 
political philosophy, 30 in public law and comparative ju- 
risprudence, 30 in economics and social science, 10 in bot- 
any, and 10 in biology. Here, perhaps, is the best j)lace to 
note that there are now 2i University Fellowships (each of 
the value of $500 a year) open to advanced students whether 
graduates of Columbia or of any other college maintaining 
equivalent standards. And here, also, I may record the 
recent establishment of the Columbia University Press, 
intended to do for Columbia wliat the Clarendon Press does 
for Oxford. 

Again and again had the trustees of Columbia, appreciat- 
ing the opportunity which a great city affords, formulated 
projects for developing the college into a true university. 
A special effort had been made in 1857 to establish a post- 
graduate course, abandoned after the first year, during 
which, however. Marsh delivered his invaluable lectures on 
the history of the English language. Even as late as 1857 
neither the college, nor the city, nor the country, it may be 
admitted, was ready for post-graduate work. But thirty- 
live j'ears had wrought a great change : Mr. Eliot had re- 
made Harvard; Mr. Oilman had established Johns Hopkins; 
the times were ripe at last. In the college itself and in the 
schools around about it were all the elements of a great 
university needing only formal organization and cautious 
expansion. The uni-elated parts had to be welded into an 
organic whole ; and this was accomplished before the end of 
the third year of Mr. Low's administration. 

The old college with its four-year course of under-grad- 



176 FOUM AMERICAN VNIVERSITIES 

uate work was distinguished by the honored name of the 
School of Arts, and with it Cohimbia had then seven schools; 
and these schools together constituted a university covering 
every department of the great European universities except 
the faculty of theology — a deficiency since made good by 
alliances with the various theological seminaries already 
established in the city. The college itself had its traditions, 
which were jealously guarded, and the Medical School, the 
Law School, and the School of Mines had enjoyed years of 
autonomy. In the new organization the independence of 
every school was carefully respected ; and in matters af- 
fecting itself alone it was allowed to continue to manage 
its own affairs almost as freely as it had aforetime. Ev- 
ery school had its own faculty, who elected, a Dean as its 
administrative head. Every school sent its Dean and one 
other elected delegate to a University Council presided 
over by the President ; and to this University Council the 
trustees have given a certain authority over internal af- 
fairs. Tiie trustees manage the finances of the institu- 
tion, they appoint the more important olficers, and they 
have a right of veto on the acts of the University Council. 
The several faculties, on the other hand, meet monthly to 
discuss their own needs, each having two representatives on 
the University Council. Thus, while the trustees retain the 
financial administration, they have committed the general 
educational administration to the University Council. This 
organization has been developed out of the exigencies of the 
situation ; it is not ideal, perhaps, yet it is satisfactory ; it 
is not as cumbrous as it may seem ; it has given Columbia a 
government at once solid and flexible, apportioning power 
and responsibility equitabl}^ and advantageously. 

It was this special organization, peculiar to Columbia, 




EX-PRESIDENT FREDERICK A P. BARNARD 



COLUMBI.l IWir/iJiSITT 179 

Avliich permitted tlie next step wlicreby the college (that is, 
the School of Arts) and the iiiiiversity (that is, the six other 
schools) were more closely united, and whereby a new solu- 
tion was found for one of the most pressing problems now- 
confronting those in charge of the higher education in the 
United States. AVithin the past quarter of a century, under 
the lead of Harvard, the chief American colleges have been 
increasing their entrance requirements, with the result of 
raising the average age of the student at graduation nearly 
a year. Within the last ten years the chief schools of law 
and of medicine have lengthened their courses of study to 
cover three and four years instead of two. In consequence 
of this double action the period of education has been ex- 
tended unduly, and the age at which a young man is pre- 
pared to enter upon the practice of his profession has been 
postponed for quite two years. That this is a hardship no 
one denied ; and it presses most severely upon the students 
who seek the best training, for it is only at the best col- 
leges and at the best schools that the increase has taken 
place. 

Various methods of meeting the difficulty have been pro- 
posed. At Harvard, President Eliot has suggested that a 
student be permitted to do the work of four years in three 
— if he could. At Chicago, President Harper has divided the 
college year into quarters, a student being allowed to take 
any quarter in the year as a vacation, and being allowed also 
to go without vacation if he chooses, and thus to take the 
twelve required quarters in three years of incessant work. 
The disadvantages of both the Harvard plan and of the Chi- 
cago are twofold — first, they allow an unwholesome pressure 
continued for three years without intermission; and, second, 
they authorize a shortening of the college course from four 



180 



£'OUIi AM ERIC AX UyirEIiSlTlES 



years to three, and so permit a student to deprive himself of 
one-fourth of those indirect benefits of college hfe, which 
are quite as important as the direct instruction received from 
the professors. In the atmosphere of a good college there 
is something broadening ; and in tlie daily contact with 




SILVKH MEDAL OF KING S COLLECiE — OBVERSE 



one's classmates there is something awakening and stimulat- 
ing. Any reduction in viie length of the college course must 
needs reduce these advantages proportionately. 

Wholly different from the plans of Harvard and Chicago 
is that which has been adopted at Columbia, and which was 
possible only in a college forming part of a great university. 
No man can graduate from Columbia in less than four years, 
but the instruction given by the School of Arts (that is, by 
the college strictly so called) ceases at the end of the Junior 
year ; and in the Senior year the student is free to select his 



COLUMBIA UyiVEUSITY 



181 



courses from among those offered by the six university fac- 
ulties. He must elect a total of fifteen hours a week, but 
under certain restrictions he can take these where he pleases 
— in the School of Philosophy or in the School of Political 
Science, in the School of Pure Science or in the School of 
Mines. He may, if he choose, take the first year's work in 
the Law School or in the Medical School ; and his work will 
count for the A. P. degree, and also for the M.D. or LL.B., 
as the case may be. He cannot take the A.B. degree in less 
than four years, but if he intends also to take an M.D., or an 




SILVER MF.DiL OF KING S COLLEGE — REVERSE 



LL.B., or a B.S. (in architecture, for example), or an M.E., 
he can shorten by one year the time required to take both 
degrees. 

But he remains a Senior ; the class organization is kept 
intact ; the class feeling continues ; the college spirit is 

12* 



182 FOUR AMERICAN VNIVEESITIES 

alight; the student is still an under -graduate; he is still 
touching elbows with his classmates, however widely they 
may be scattered through the various schools ; he is still 
breathing the atmosphere of culture. It is this : it is the 
privilege of stimulative companionship ; it is the obligation 
to consider higher things than mere bread-and-butter stud- 
ies ; it is the association with ardent spirits full of youth- 
ful ambitions — it is this which is the best gift a college has 
in its hands. By the Harvard proposition and by the 
Chicago project the college course could be cut down a 
year, and an under-graduate could cut himself out of one- 
fourth of this precious having. By the Columbia plan the 
year is saved in both ways — the under-graduate is doing a 
post-graduate work ; but b}' so doing he is j'et getting the 
benefits of a full four - years' course. In other words, the 
old college — the School of Arts — has been put under the 
professional schools, and thus made the foundation of the 
university. 

If the under-graduate does not intend to be a lawyer or 
a physician, if he does not desire to pursue one of the 
learned professions, if he is studying merely for culture and 
training and to tit himself for the battle of life, then he 
loses nothing by this plan, for in his Senior year he chooses 
his whole fifteen hours in the schools of Political Science 
and of Philosophy, and of Pure Science, where he has the 
incalculable advantage of studying side by side with post- 
graduates already imbued with university ideals. Thus he 
soon has occasion to discover that the difference between 
college tasks and university work is not merely quantita- 
tive, but qualitative also, and tliat where the college sought 
to give breadth the university seeks to give depth. He 
finds out that it is not the size of its enrolment that makes 



COLVMlU.l LMVKltSlTY 183 

the greatness of a university, but the originahty of its in- 
structors and the spirit of its students. 

There is no doubt tiiat the raising: of the asre of sradua- 
tion in our colleges and the simultaneous lengthening of the 
course of the professional schools have had a tendency to 
deter men who had resolved to be lawyers or physicians, 
engineers or architects, from taking the college course as 
a preliminary to their professional studies. President Low 
has expressed his belief that the system introduced at Co- 
lumljia will do much to offset this unfortunate tendency. 
Columbia, so its President declared in his report for 1802, 
" does not offer men less, but greater, inducements to con- 
tinue their non-professional studies, if they can, for the full 
]ieriod of four years. More than this, wliile they are pursu- 
ing their professional work, all the resources of tlie univer- 
sity are at their command to enable them to continue other 
studies which interest them or to make good deficiencies.'' 
And Mr. Low added that " it is too soon to speak with cer- 
tainty, but it is believed that the result of this system will be 
to keep many men at Columbia for si.x j'ears who otherwise 
would stay but four years in the School of Arts, or even a 
shorter time in one of the professional schools only." The 
college having thus been made what it should be, the foun- 
dation of the university, the Seniors cannot but be tempted 
to further graduate work in the future; proljably many 
more men will remain a fifth 3'ear at least, to take the 
A.M. degree, and it is a fact that in 1894 there were more 
than a hundred graduates of the college continuing their 
studies thei'e under one or more of the university fac- 
ulties. 

" Whatever place can draw together the greatest amount 
and the greatest variety of intellect and character, the most 



184 FOUR AMERICAN VNIYERSITIES 

abundant elements of civilization, performs the best func- 
tion of a university," said Lowell ; and Newman has also 
suggested that a great city is a university in itself. Per- 
haps it is not too much to say that only in a great city can 
a great university, witii its allied faculties, be maintained, 
adequately. And as the distinction between the American 
college of the present, remotely modelled on the British 
public-school, and the American university of the future, 
broadly patterned after the German universities — as the 
distinction between these institutions, wholly different in 
purpose, gets to be better apprehended, and as the true 
university is developed here and there throughout the 
United States, probably the managers of most of the coun- 
try colleges will discover the futility of any attempt to 
divert these institutions from their path of usefulness as 
colleges, and the hopelessness of all efforts to expand them 
into universities. By the mere fact of their geographical 
position certain institutions are indicated as colleges, and 
certain others are suggested as possible universities. With- 
in a radius of an hour's travel by rail. Harvard is in the 
centre of a population of about a million ; so is Johns Hop- 
kins; so is the new University of Chicago. Before these 
three institutions, therefore, lie the limitless possibilities of 
real university development. Within the same radius about 
Columbia there is a population nearl}^ as large as the sum 
of the populations which surround Harvard and Johns 
Hopkins and the University of Chicago. 

The modern university needs the metropolis, with its 
museums, its galleries, its theatres, its libraries, its theo- 
logical seminaries, its art schools, its conservatories of 
music, its hospitals, and its charitable institutions. The 
centre of education in France is in Paris ; the new Uni- 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 187 

versity of Berlin lias pushed rapidly to a front place in 
Germany; the University of Vienna has no second in Aus- 
tro-Hungary ; even in London the need is felt of a teach- 
ing university which shall gather into one the scattered 
educational forces of the British capital. The semi-rural- 
it\' which gives Yale and Princeton, for example, an ad- 
vantage over Columbia as a college becomes a distinct dis- 
advantage when they seek to expand into universities. By 
the time a young man is old enough to undertake univer- 
sity work he is old enough to take care of himself — if 
he ever will be. 

At Columbia the college holds its own stanchly, and is 
now stronger and more firmly established than ever before, 
but its attendance is not large ; in 1894-95 it has less than 
300 under-graduates, while the total number of students at 
Columbia this year is about 2000 — of whom some 600 are 
gi'aduates. 

That students from all parts of the United States appre- 
ciate the advantages offered by Columbia can be made evi- 
dent by a few figures. The constituency of Columbia as a 
college is mainly local ; its constituency as a university is 
more than national : it is international. President Low 
reported that in 1893-94 the 575 graduate students at Colum- 
bia represented 118 colleges and universities in the United 
States and 18 in foreign countries. It is to be noted that 
in almost every American university, except Johns Hopkins 
and Harvard, the graduate students are principally gradu- 
ates of the institution at which they are continuing their 
studies ; at Columbia, in 1893-94, only 102 of the 575 gradu- 
ate students came from the college itself. This indicates 
that the young men of the United States are beginning to 
understand that there is now a great university' in the me- 



188 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

tropolis of the country offering opportunities for advanced 
study not surpassed anywhere else. 

Perhaps no other symptom of the recent expansion of 
Columbia is quite as striking as the development of its 
library. In 1S70 the library was housed in a single room 
over the chapel ; and it was open only one hour a day, 
five days in the week, and eight months in the year. In 
1894 the library occupies a noble building of its own ; and 
it is open fourteen hours a day, six days a week, twelve 
months in the year. Twenty -five years ago it had some 
15,000 volumes only ; now it has nearly 200,000 bound vol- 
umes, and its growth in a single year has almost attained 
to 20,000 volumes. The students have absolutely free ac- 
cess to the shelves, and are allowed to help themselves at 
will to such books as they wish to read in the library itself, 
a privilege of which they avail themselves to the utmost. 
They also drew out in 1893-94 for use in their own homes 
42,015 books (not volumes merely). 

The library of Columbia is also the depositary and cus- 
todian of the books of various learned societies. Among 
its own special departments is the architectural collection 
given and endowed by Mr. S. P. Avery in memory of his 
son. The Avery Architectural Library now contains more 
than 12,000 volumes ; it is already one of the richest in 
the world in books about architecture, art, and archteology ; 
and, thanks to the constant munificence of Mr. Avery, it is 
steadily enlarging. 

Nor is the student in New York at all dependent on the 
library of Columbia, for he has access not only to the Astor 
Library and the Lenox Library (in which are now the books 
of George Bancroft), but also to the libraries of the Bar 
Association and of the Academy of Medicine, and to the 



COLVMIIIA rMVERHITY 189 

innumerable special collections of clubs and associations and 
societies which abound in New York and with which Co- 
lumbia has the most friendly relations. 

And these are not the only alliances Columbia has made 
for the benefit of her students. From the beginning the 
connection of the School of Medicine with the hospitals has 
been close. Of late there has been arranged an alliance, so 
to speak, with three theological seminaries, whereby Colum- 
bia gains most of the advantages of a divinity school, and 
whereb}' she is enabled greatly to enlarge the opportunity 
for new combinations of study, which it is one of the most 
important duties of a university to secure. Friendly rela- 
tions have been established also with the American Muse- 
um of Natural History and with the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, and in both museums many courses of lectures have 
been given this past winter by professors of Columbia. 
Whenever the new Botanic Garden, to be established in 
Bronx Park, comes into being, Columbia will be able to 
utilize that also, under arrangements already made, Avhere- 
by the management of tlie garden has been offered to her. 
If, as may be hoped, a Zoological Garden follows in due 
course, no doubt Columbia will be able to make a treaty 
with that as well. 

The suggestion thus carried out was due to Bishop Potter, 
who declared several years ago that " such affiliation of 
the college to institutions of various learning around it 
would at once enlarge their usefulness and ennoble our 
own, and go far towards the realization of one's dream of 
the ideal university." The alliance between Columbia 
and the theological seminary, like that between Columbia 
and the American Museum of Natui'al History, is evidence 
that the college is tending to take its place as the core of 



190 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

the intellectual life of New York. To a host of learned 
societies having no formal relation to the college itself, 
and yet working towards the same literary, scientific, his- 
torical, and artistic ends, the college is hospitable. " There 
are some twenty -five or thirty such societies practically 
domiciled within the college walls, and finding there their 
working and efiicient centre," said Bishop Potter, who 
also asked : " Did you ever walk up Madison Avenue of an 
evening? For, if so, you must have seen that at night the 
■windows of the college gleam like a light -house — true 
symbol of the illumination that streams forth on every 
hand." Not wishing to keep her light under a bushel, Co- 
lumbia has freely aided Cooper Institute, many of the lect- 
ures there being now given under the authority of the col- 
lege. 

With two other of the institutions of New York, both 
educational, the relation of Columbia is almost too intimate 
to be called an alliance. These two institutions are the 
Teachers College and Barnard College. 

The Teachers College was planned and founded by a 
Columbia professor, Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler, at pres- 
ent Dean of the School of Philosophy, and is now, so far 
as the opportunities for students are concerned, practically 
a part of Columbia. It has, however, a separate board of 
trustees and a separate financial administration. The aim 
of the Teachers College is to train highly educated and 
well-equipped teachers of elementary and secondary schools, 
as well as superintendents, supervisors, and specialists in the 
principles and practice of teaching. It maintains a school 
of observation and practice. In spirit and in method it is a 
genuine university department — doubtless the most exten- 
sive and ambitious as yet anywhere developed by the veiy 




I'uassi^ned 



Unas!it!;iied 



GENERAL PLAN OF THE GKOUNDS AND BUILDINGS OF THE NKW COLL'MUIA CULI.KUK 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 193 

modern movement for the scientific study of educational 
problems. By formal contract the faculty of Philosojjhy of 
Columbia has full control of the courses at the Teachers 
College leading to the degrees of A.B., A.M., and Ph.!). ; and 
it is Columbia which grants these degrees to the students of 
the Teachers College. 

Barnard College, named after Mr. Low's predecessor in 
the presidency of Columbia in recognition of his efforts 
to further the higher education of women, is a college for 
women that offers the same collegiate opportunities to 
the one sex that the School of Arts offers to the other. 
Most of the instruction at Barnard is given by Columbia 
professors, and no instructor can be appointed at Barnard 
without the approval of the President of Columbia. In 
other words, while Barnard cannot yet proffer to its students 
all the courses offered at Columbia, it has no course which 
is not given at Columbia also ; its standards are absolutely 
equivalent; its examinations, both semiannual and final, are 
precisely the same ; and Columbia grants its degrees to the 
Barnard graduates. It is pleasant to record that Barnard 
has now safely passed the experimental stage, and must be 
reckoned among the active forces in the higher education 
of the country. 

Stress has here been laid — perhaps unduly — upon these 
partnerships and alliances of Columbia because it is only by 
dwellins: on such arrangements that the reader can be made 
to see clearly the peculiar position of the university. The 
disadvantages under which a college labors when it is in the 
centre of a mighty city are obvious enough, but the correla- 
tive advantages are not so easily apparent and must needs 
be pointed out. So also the present organization of Colum- 
bia has been explained — perhaps unduly — because it is thus 

13 



194 FOUR AMERICAN VXIVE^SITJES 

that it is easiest to make cleai' to the reader the successive 
stages of the expansion of the college into the university of 
which it is now a component part. 

And what makes it far more difficult for any one to seize 
and report upon the salient features of Columbia than it is 
to perform a similar service for Harvard or Yale or Prince- 
ton is the fact that this inner and, so to speak, spiritual de- 
velopment of Columbia has been accompanied by a physi- 
cal expansion which is making necessary a removal to a site 
whereon the institution may find room to spread itself free- 
ly and indefinitely in the future. Once more Columbia is 
about to transport itself to '' the skirts of the city." Its 
third and final site is one of the finest possessed by any uni- 
versity in the world. It is on the plateau between Morning- 
side Park and the Riverside Drive, between Grant's Tomb 
and the new cathedral of St. John the Divine. 

In 1892 the trustees of Columbia bought a piece of land 
two and a half times the size of Madison Square, and bound- 
ed by 116th and 120th streets, Amsterdam Avenue, and the 
Boulevard. The grounds thus acquired are a little larger 
than the Yale campus and a little smaller than the Har- 
vard yard. After consultation with a committee of lead- 
ing architects of New York and with Mr. Olmstead (the 
designer of Central Park), the trustees of Columbia empow- 
ered Messrs. McKim, Mead & White to prepare preliminary 
plans for the disposition of the chief of the new buildings 
with which these new grounds are to be adorned and made 
useful. In his account of Harvard, Professor Norton has 
declared that " the value of the influence of noble architect- 
ure, simple as it may be, at a great seat of education, es- 
pecially in our country, is hardly to be overestimated ;" 
and he thinks that it has been so disregarded at Harvard 



voiuMBT.i rxrvEnsiTT 107 

that it would be a work of |)atriotisin to destroy all the 
later buildings there and reconstruct them " with simple and 
beautiful design, in mutually lu-ipiul, harmonious, and ef- 
fective relation to each other, so that the outward aspect 
of the university should better conform to its object as a 
place for the best education of the youth of the nation." It 
is such a reconstruction as this that Columbia is now about 
to attempt, with a full understanding of the obligations of 
so great an opportunity and with the earnest desire to erect 
buildings not only perfect for their several purposes, but 
beautiful in design, and related one to another harmoniously 
and effectively. 

Some of the halls whose positions are indicated on the 
ground-plan finally adopted by the trustees must be put up 
before the university can be removed ; others can be added 
from year to year as they are needed, and as the monej^ 
shall be given for their erection. The cost of the site was 
$2,000,000, and the plans prepared call for an ultimate ex- 
penditure of some $3,000,000 more, for which the college 
must rely on the liberality of its friends, and on the gener- 
osity of the citizens of New York. 

Here occasion serves to correct a current misunderstand- 
ing. Columbia College is popularly supposed to be very 
rich ; and it is a fact that only one or two universities in the 
United States are as heavily endowed. But for the work 
before it Columbia is not rich enough. Its rent-roll is prob- 
ably as large now as it is ever likely to be. Its budget for 
1894-95 is over $700,000, of which less than $300,000 comes 
from the fees of its students. Even for the actual work of 
instruction it already finds itself cramped, so broad has been 
its recent expansion. As President Eliot said at the alumni 
dinner which followed the installation of President Low : 
13* 



198 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

" It is simply impossible to carry on a great university in 
this expensive city with any such meagre resources as those 
which Columbia now possesses. She must have manifold 
more." And the President of Harvard told us that he spent 
$800,000 a year, and that Harvard had received in gifts of 
money within a score of years $5,000,000 in addition to 
$2,500,000 worth of buildings and .lands. The trustees of 
Columbia have wisely decided to rely on gifts and bequests 
for the new buildings needed on the new grounds, and not 
to divert to construction an^' of the money the}' now use in 
instruction, holding that it is the teaching stafif which makes 
a university, and not the outward show of bricks and mor- 
tar. 

In no respect has the example set by Johns Hopkins been 
more useful than in the exhibition by its first president of 
his conviction that a university needs a soul more than a 
body, that the men who are to teach in it are more impor- 
tant than the stone walls which shelter them. It was Gar- 
field who declared that Mark Hopkins at the other end of 
a log was a good enough college for him ; but he thus laid 
himself open to the obvious retort that the end of a log was 
not a good enough college for Mark Hopkins. Whether or 
not the teaching staff of Columbia numbers on its roll a 
Mark Hopkins need not now be discussed ; it does number 
many sincere investigators and many earnest instructors. 
Although there is more than one new chair which we hope 
to see soon established, the list of instructors is already 
very large — larger than at any other American university 
excepting only Harvard — and for purposes of advanced 
work perhaps the largest of all. Omitting the fellows, who 
give no instruction, and omitting wholly the staff of the 
library, in 1893-94 there were 258 professors, lecturers, tu- 




PROPOSED DESIGN FOR THE NEW LlifRARY HL ILliINIj — MEW UK THE iRONT FACING 
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH STREET 



tors, and assistants of one kind or another engaged in the 
actual work of instruction. 

It is pleasant to be able to declare that the relations of 
the instructors and the students are satisfactor3^ Of the 
2000 students, about 600 are graduates, and the presence of 
so many raaturer scholars has a wholesome effect in raising 
the standard of college etliics. The imder-graduates are 
treated as gentlemen, and they are expected to behave as 
gentlemen : rarely, indeed, is this expectation disappointed. 
Discipline is as mild as may be ; and the student has thus 
the wholesome freedom which trains him in self-control. 
Now and again the freshmen and the sophomores rush 
against each other in serried ranks ; and here and there we 



200 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

have outbreaks of animal spirits, to be considered not as 
evidences of total depravity, but to be accepted rather as 
" useful conductors for the natural electricity of youth," to 
use Lowell's apt phrase, " dispersing it or turning it harm- 
lessly into the earth." 

The chief student festivals are the Triumph of the Soph- 
omores, the Junior ball, and Class-day. Under the assimilat- 
ing influence of the secret societies, the literary societies, 
the musical clubs, and the athletic association, the under- 
graduates of the Arts and of the Mines foregather now far 
more than they did a quarter of a century ago. It must be 
confessed that in the absence of dormitories the student 
body of Columbia perhaps lacks a little of the homogeneity 
to be found in some other institutions. But the uuder-grad- 
uate gets his share of college life for all that, and he finds 
his enjoyment in it ; and he has a mai'ked character of his 
own. He has the urban characteristics ; he takes polish 
easily ; he wears well. In their association with men 
from other colleges the students of Columbia have won the 
double reputation of being gentlemen and of having pluck. 
Their athletic record has been marred by no squabbles, and 
even in defeat they have showed grit to the end. They are 
not unlike tlie city troops in the Civil War, which, although 
they niig]}t seem slight in build, turned out well and stood 
the strain as sturdily as any. 

It cannot be denied that Columbia is not one of the great 
athletic centres of the country ; and for this there are many 
reasons, some of which are temporary only and will tend to 
disappear when Columbia is firml}' established on its new 
site. The college has been cramped in a single city block, 
with no grounds for exercise, and with no adequate gymna- 
sium until the fall of 1893 ; and, therefore, athletic work 



VULVMBl.i VXlVERtilTY 201 

was undertaken under most adverse circumstances. Yet 
Columbia has won a race now and then ; and it once sent 
its four over to Henley and carried off the Visitor's Cup. 
It has hekl the tennis championship, and in track athletics 
its record is highly honorable. 

Of all the agencies which advertise a college as distin- 
guished from a university none is superior to a successful 
eight on the river, to a victorious nine on the baseball dia- 
mond, to a triumphant eleven on the football field. Second 
only to these, as a means of attracting students, are its own 
graduates who have won positions in other institutions. Un- 
til within the past ten or fifteen years Columbia sent forth 
but few educators. Of late she has seen her sons appointed 
to many important professorships throughout the country. 
But in the past she trained more publicists than professors. 
The tradition of Hamilton and Jay has always been strong, 
and there has been no time since the Revolution when a vei'y 
large proportion of the men prominent in the public life of 
New York were not graduates from Columbia, from the day 
when De Witt Clinton was governor of the State to the day 
wlien Mr. Abram S. Hewitt was mayor of New York and 
Mr. Setli Low mayor of Brooklj'n. 

This, indeed, has been the position of Columbia in the 
past, and this prescribes its work in the future. It has been 
chiefl}' a college for New-Yorkers; while it will continue 
to be a college appealing especially to the three or four mill- 
ion people now congregated near the mouth of the Hudson 
Eiver, and while it will strive always in the future to do its 
duty to the city as in the past, Columbia is now also a uni- 
versity, situated in the metropolis and drawing to itself de- 
voted teachers and ardent students, not from the city alone, 
but from the whole countrv. And it is the belief of those 



202 FOVR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

who know it best and love it best, that Columbia has be- 
come a universitj without in an}^ wa_y impairing its power 
to accomplish what Curtis declared to be the prime duty 
of the American college — that it shall equip and thor- 
oughly train American citizens. " When I say that the 
American college is now required to train American citi- 
zens," Curtis continued, "I do not mean that it is to abdi- 
cate its highest possible function, which is not to impart 
knowledge — not to impart knowledge, gentlemen — but 
to stimulate that intellectual and moral power of which 
I speak. It is a poor education, believe me, that gives us 
accuracy in grammar instead of a love of letters ; that leaves 
us masters of the integral calculus and slaves of sordid spirit 
and mean ambition. AVhen I say that it is to train Ameri- 
cans, I mean not only that it is to be a gnome of the earth, 
but also a good genius of the higher sphere. With one 
hand it shall lead the young American to the secrets of ma- 
terial skill; it shall equip him to enter into the fullest trade 
with all the world ; but with the other it shall lead him to 
lofty thought and to commerce with the skies. Tiie college 
shall teach him the secret and methods of material success ; 
but, above it all, it shall adnionisli him that man does not 
live on bread alone, and that the things which are eternal 
are unseen." 



THE END 



n.\ 



